So scary, so gross. Lexington needs to ditch Flock now.

Wish I’d done more to resist Flock adoption in Lexington.

One of my favorite things that Lexington does is to hold a bike light awareness “Glow Ride” the night before the fall time change. It’s been a family tradition for us and a lot of fun.

We are big fans of libraries in our family. In fact, live near the border between two counties, and we split our library visits between the Lexington Public Library (where we are residents) and the Jessamine County Public Library (where we are not). Luckily, Kentucky library systems tend to be fairly liberal in handing out library cards, so this isn’t usually a hassle (this was not the case in Central Michigan, but that’s a story for another time).

Wish it were for more principled reasons, but I’ll take it.

Lexington has lots of room to improve, but I’m glad they’re getting credit for the good work they’ve done.

I have a “dad friend” I see most afternoons as we’re waiting for our kiddos to get out of school. He walks his kid home every day, and I either walk home or bike home with kiddo (a lot of walking recently because weather and a broken bike have been getting in our way). So, we hang out where all the walking parents hang out and chat for a few minutes before heading home. I’m on the list of approved people to pick his kid up, I keep meaning to add him to the list of approved people to pick kiddo up, our kids have been in the same class for two years in a row, and our shared relationship with the school and our kid’s teacher is pretty much the whole basis of our relationship.

Ew, gross, no.

J’aime bien la ville où j’habite, mais c’est fort dommage qu’il n’y ait pas d’Alliance Française ici.

One of kiddo’s favorite podcasts is the delightful Forever Ago, each episode of which dives into the history of something specific, such as the weekend, Black cowboys, etc. Kiddo often listens to podcasts in the morning while waiting for (or eating) breakfast, and on Saturday morning, knowing that we were visiting Lexington Pride later that day, she pulled up the episode on the history of the rainbow Pride flag.

With that history fresh in our minds, I noticed something different about the rainbow flags that fly in downtown Lexington during hte month of June: Lexington does not fly the common six-stripe rainbow flag. Instead, it flies a version of the flag with pink in it. I was so distracted by the pink that I didn’t count the other colors, but I’m guessing this is most likely the original eight-color flag designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978, as featured in that Forever Ago episode and as seen below.

J’ai appris cette semaine que les transports publics de ma ville sont soutenus par la RATP, ce qui m’étonne pas mal.

I have written council representatives about this more than anything else, and yet I suspect that it will go through again without a fuss. This isn’t the worst form of surveillance, but it is still surveillance, pure and simple.

What a dumb allegation. Just makes me want to vote for Wu even more.

Speaking personally, I’d be happy to pay extra taxes to better support our local schools.

Looks like a fun local gaming pub.

I want to be more involved with and aware of what the FCPS school board is up to—livestreaming seems like a good idea to me.

These numbers sound great, but what cost are we paying? I’m not talking about the $70,000, I’m talking about the hard to quantify costs of surveillance—which, as the ACLU of KY points out, are likely to disproportionately target communities of color. Except we can’t know that because the city won’t tell us where the cameras are.

I haven’t read Limón’s poetry (I don’t read much poetry at all), but I’ll have to change that. Happy for some Kentucky and Lexington representation in this way.

When I made the decision to join Community of Christ, it wasn’t (just) because this was a denomination that aligned with my current religious and social values, but because I knew it would be a denomination that pushed me to improve my current religious and social values. I know that I have room to grow in being a better person and in making the world a better place, and I felt that Community of Christ is a denomination that would not only show me grace for who I was but also walk with me as I tried to grow in these ways.

The title of this post is a bit misleading. My wife and I aren’t really big on “Parent’s Day” celebrations: Years of Latter-day Saint “all women are mothers” (read: motherhood is the most important part of womanhood) Sunday services grated on us during our years of infertility, and even now that we are parents (and aren’t practicing Latter-day Saints—though my current denomination certainly isn’t immune from a cringeworthy celebration of parents either), it’s just not a thing we do.

Most of this budget sounds great, but why are we budgeting for 75 more ALPRs when we haven’t even finished the trial of the current ones yet? Not to mention that the trial is unlikely to evaluate ethics, only “effectiveness.”

There are a few yellow flags in this article for me. Quick and efficient sounds good, but are those the most important values in policing? What values do they stand in tension with? It’s great that there are policies against using a ALPR database for personal reasons, but these policies regularly get violated. No, these aren’t videosurveillance cameras, but that doesn’t make them harmless.

Hooray for additional bike infrastructure!

Proud of Lexington for hosting this. Also wondering if I should check the Lexington groups on Gab to see if the local far-right is cranky about it.

City council member responded to my concerned email by basically telling me I should have spoken up before the vote happened. Feels harsh but fair—want to do better about showing up and speaking up.