Just finished Cory Doctorow’s Attack Surface, a few months after reading Little Brother and Homeland. It is the addition to that series we need right now.

Why did no one tell me there’s a new Stromae single???

One of my data science students just did a t-test to demonstrate that evil-aligned monsters in D&D 5e tend to have lower Armor Class than good-aligned monsters. This course demands a lot of effort, but moments like this make it worth it.

grad student, immediately after entering my office: “Wow, you really like Star Wars, huh?” me: “Yes, but have you also noticed all my cool train magnets?”

Two years ago today, I visited a mental health therapist for the first time and immediately wished I’d done it a decade earlier. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself, and I can’t recommend the experience enough.

Here I am, refreshing local news to get sports updates—not because I care about the game, but because I want to know when my neighbors will stop yelling at their TV.

I feel a lot of anxiety about being a parent, but at the end of the day, I take comfort in knowing I’m trying my best—and that I’ve done my part in introducing the next generation to Queen’s Live Aid performance.

Dreamt that despite having a PhD, I had somehow never finished my BA. Had to explain a lot to employer and was trying to transfer to Centre College to make completing the degree earlier.

On one hand, I am worried about the platformed internet. On the other, I realize that the phenomenon of “in cab” train videos probably wouldn’t exist without a centralized, problematic behemoth like YouTube, and that would make me sad.

It amazes me how many people there are who think it’s acceptable to ride a scooter or a skateboard the wrong way down a bike lane.

What if our collective disdain as education researchers for learning styles is the result of an overemphasis on efficacy and improvement and a corresponding undervaluing of accessibility and equity?

Teaching R for the first time, and many students are first-time programmers. I’m reminded of teaching French in terms of how easy it is to take for granted things that aren’t obvious to beginners.

Something feels characteristically Utah about this Park City company trying to turn graham crackers into a rugged frontier food while conveniently omitting its origins in the temperance movement.

I brought up the federal German elections in class today to make a point about WordPress; I’d say it made sense in context, but I can’t promise that was true for the students!

I think you can be glad a villain got unmasked but uneasy that Batman’s the one who did it.

I have finished the article review I was a week behind on, so now I just need to tackle the two-weeks-late and six-weeks-late projects on my plate. After I get the course prep done that I was hoping to do yesterday.

Unsatisfied with the Intro to Data Science textbook I’ve inherited. Fortunately, an earlier version is Creative Commons-licensed, as are some other fantastic resources. Guess who’s going to remix himself a new textbook for next Fall!

Looks like the NSF is now using the term STEAM, which just makes me dislike the term even more.

I know I’m going to make plenty of mistakes teaching Intro to Data Science for the first time, but one thing I’m already proud of is teaching my students to use <code> tags to format code and output in their Canvas posts.

Currently reading Hervé Le Tellier’s « L’Anomalie », and it is so dang good. An English translation (The Anomaly) is coming later this year, so I’m going to go ahead and recommend this book to everyone.

This weekend, after over a decade of off-and-on attempts, I finally read the entire run of Y: The Last Man. Turns out the upcoming Hulu adaptation was a good motivator.

I was made aware of an unexpected generational divide today when one of my first-year students announced that as far as he was concerned, there were only six Star Wars movies.

If there is a better way to end the first week of classes than Ted Lasso and Marcel Pagnol, I don’t know what it is.

I often think of Nel Noddings’s argument that while increasing women’s participation in STEM is a must, we haven’t achieved victory until we’ve also increased men’s participation in historically-feminine fields.

A great way to insert a bit of hesitation into your next viewing of Firefly is to think about how among all the other Western tropes in there, Mal and Zoe are essentially coded as former Confederate soldiers.