Sapiens is a challenging book, but that’s also why it’s a must-read. As much as its focus is on science & technology, I ultimately read it as a reminder that we need to ask ?s from the humanities to safely navigate our present and future.

They need “pairs well with” recommendations for children’s clothes so that you know what food stains will go with the intended color scheme.

My first rule as a low-budget Twitter researcher is to collect interesting data first, ask (research) questions later. I have a lot of data I’ve never used, but I’d rather deal with that than a missed opportunity.

In jury-rigged standing desk news, I have replaced the MacBook box my monitor was teetering on with a Yeti microphone box, and I think I’ve got the monitor at the right height now.

Bike commuting adventure of the day: Finding all the places in my office where I can discretely hang up wet clothes from a rainy commute (thank goodness for my closet full of dry work clothes).

I tried to explain to my kid the premise of “Guantánamo Kid” (a comic about the innocent 14-year old Mohamed Al-Gharani’s incarceration in Gitmo). Her response: “A little boy shouldn’t be in jail!”

Just finished the 2006 “Life on Mars.” Fantastic premise, and some amazing individual scenes, but not quite enough connective tissue between the two.

Does anyone know of research on social media surveillance by school districts? Some local news stories have me thinking of a potential future project…

Just had a paper rejected from a special issue, but the journal has been such a pain to work with over the last 8(!) months that I’m frankly just glad it’s over.

When Twitter first gut-punched third-party apps by limiting their API, I was afraid not being able to check “likes” through Tweetbot would make it unusable. Now, that’s actually the appeal.

Central Kentucky libraries apparently have summer reading programs for adults, and I can’t remember the last time I was this excited.

I got a reminder today that I do the kind of research where something as hilariously unintuitive as telling a program to treat long numbers as “words made up of 0-9” is actually a critical step to making sure you get the right results.

I love learning more about regular expressions except the part where it’s always in response to some mistake I’ve made.

The welcome surprise of finding that a book I checked out for personal reading will be helpful for research outweighs all the guilt I felt about using my university’s interlibrary loan to request books for personal reading.

My kid can’t name our street and thinks our city is called “UK” but does know that we’re on Earth in the Milky Way galaxy.

Nothing like the release of teacher course evaluations to remind me how much of my self-worth is still tied to what other people think. 😬😬😬

Paying for my third year of Posteo tonight and not missing Gmail at all. (Still haven’t kicked the Drive/Docs habit, though).

Today is the primary for the 2019 state elections here in KY, and I’m really missing Michigan’s open primaries. Not being able to vote today may be what finally pushes me to declare a party affiliation after more than a decade of not doing so.

Learning that you can request article PDFs through UK’s interlibrary loan has been a GAMECHANGER.

Going to see Endgame tonight, and it occurred to me earlier today that the first Avengers came out when I was still in college, and this one came out at the tail end of my second semester as an assistant professor.

As a big fan of both The Good Place and the French language, I suddenly feel an urgent need to know what substitutes Chidi hears in French when Eleanor tries to swear in English.

A U.S. Rep from Kentucky recently criticized John Kerry for having a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science; I’m afraid he’ll come for me soon when he finds out I’m teaching technology courses despite only having a Doctor of Philosophy.

Being an assistant professor of ICT means a constant fear that I won’t get tenure once they figure out how baffled I am by the copier.

Today I learned from first-hand experience that Latter-day Saint services aren’t the only ones with cringeworthy messages on Mother’s Day. 😤 Not sure whether that’s comforting or disappointing! 😜

Currently in the middle of the long process of purging old tweets from my Twitter account, so my profile page looks weird, as though I haven’t tweeted regularly since 2017.

Super excited that Alfred 4 is coming out this summer. I was just thinking yesterday how the app continues to impress even after years of using it.

YouTube is a great way to talk about personalization algorithms. On one hand, it’s quite good at what it does. On the other, that often leads to my watching more YouTube than I meant to, and I resent it for that.

Repeatedly stopping this afternoon to jot down notes for next offering of a particular course. Not sure if this makes me a good prof (thinking ahead) or a bad prof (I’m supposed to be grading)

Reading Cory Doctorow’s “radicalized,” and it’s great so far. Funny how a story like “Unauthorized Bread” can make me angry in a way that reading news stories and blog posts on the same subject just can’t compete with.

It’s superhero day at the YMCA tomorrow, and my spouse is going to high fitness class as Squirrel Girl after years of teasing me for liking such a relatively-obscure character. Counting this one as a win!

Sometimes I unplug my headphones and give anyone walking by my door the gift of learning about Johnny Hallyday.

I recently finished “Weapons of Mass Diplomacy,” the English translation of a comic based on the author’s time in the French foreign ministry in the leadup to the Iraq War. Loved it, but wish my library also had it in the original French.

Just got a notification that today marks a whole year since I began journaling in Day One. I’ve really enjoyed it so far (even if I have a couple dozen incomplete entries right now that I need to go back and finish).

Returning proofs for an accepted article is always fun!

Il y a une cathédrale magnifique qui brûle, et le président américain se permet de donner des conseils aux sapeurs-pompiers. Je n’en peux plus.

Every year, I hit a point where my productivity system feels constraining, so I give it up for a few days, only to feel like I no longer have any control over my time.