Was not expecting the S2 “For All Mankind” finale to influence my feelings on nuclear disarmament that much, but here we are.

Today I learned that if you replace code that’s held together by other code serving the role of duct tape with actual good code but forget to remove the metaphorical duct tape, the good code still doesn’t work.

What is the most soothing form of digital data collection, and why is it forum scraping?

Special thanks to Google Drive for breaking the iframes I’ve been using to set up annotation-enabled readings in Canvas this semester… during the week that students are reviewing readings for their final papers. Really appreciate it.

I learn a lot of ggplot2 responding to reviewers’ suggestions about plots and a lot of CSS helping students with their questions about Twine games. Turns out I only learn code when I have a project that forces me to.

I learned today that “The Handmaid’s Tale” is « La servante écarlate » in French, which provokes a lot of thoughts about translation.

Spending four figures on bike stuff and trying to remember it’s still cheaper than a second car.

It seems to me that if you’re going to make the (already weird when you think about it) choice of gendering numbers and letters in a kid’s book, you ought to go ahead and make sure it passes the Bechdel test.

Saturday afternoon online conference presentation means a bunch of fiddling with lighting in my home office on Saturday morning!

I have discovered r/trains, and it is bringing joy into the chaos that is the last few weeks of the semester.

Proposing a new syllabus on department’s class on fundamentals of hardware and software, and I’m adding reflections on equity, society, culture as they relate to ICT. Tech isn’t just technical.

Just reread “Superman Smashes the Klan” after a day that involved checking up on Gab for research purposes, and I believe more than ever that this is one of the best and most important comics of our time. 📚

Even though emoji are regularly part of my research data, it still feels weird to include them in a journal article manuscript.

Working some this week on doubling down on RSS. Switching apps, trimming feeds, continuing to use it as my Twitter and newsletter interface, and trying to get more into Micro.blog and reddit by integrating them into my RSS “readflow”.

Thinking today about all the people who have more impressive qualifications than I do but are less secure professionally because academia isn’t fair.

Five flats between two bikes in six weeks (four in the last two) can’t be a world record, but it’s a personal best that I’m not interested in beating anytime soon. Wishing the bus came closer to my house, even though that commute is even longer.

I get that people associate being tall with perks, but I’m more likely to remember things like how this “which standing desk converter is right for you?” quiz has only two options for someone over 6’1”, one of which may still be too short for me.

I turn in a frustrating number of reviews THAT I’VE ALREADY WRITTEN ON TIME a week late because the system’s “please confirm before submitting” page looks an awful lot like a “thanks for submitting, and here’s what you wrote” page.

Just because you can topic model something doesn’t mean it actually tells us anything (and please don’t ever describe computational text analysis as “objective”).

I never mind paying fines at a library, and I never grumble about a bill at a bike shop. Both institutions deserve all the money they can charge me.

I am increasingly of the opinion that the distinction between “qualitative” and “quantitative” isn’t all that useful and that what we actually mean is usually better expressed in other terms.

Despite the underlying problems with the Barabbas story, this seems like a good Friday to remember that we shouldn’t prefer violent insurrectionists over those wrongfully killed by the state.

You cannot understand online Mormonism without understanding Mormon feminism. The more I read, the clearer that becomes.

I know that Stromae has had good reasons to be taking a break these past few years, but I can’t think of anyone better qualified to put the feel of 2020 to music, so I’m still hoping for an eventual return.

The thing with any tech that promises to insert citations for you is that you still need to check the cites for mistakes and know the citation style well enough to catch the mistakes, and at that point, why bother using it in the first place?