Can I just say … Mastodon is great! I follow several people there who are part of the free and open source (FOSS) tech movement and are working to free themselves from online surveillance. It was there that I learned of the Opt Out Project by Janet Vertesi, a sociology professor at Princeton University who works at the intersection of society and technology. She opted out of Google in 2012 (an eternity ago in tech)…
Do not capitulate to the authoritarian in advance. I have heard this advice from pro-democracy experts numerous times over the past few months. It’s critical advice when faced with an incoming President who promises to be a vindictive dictator from Day One. In the United States, all of us hold the freedom of speech dear, especially the freedom to criticize our government officials, and this is one area, among many, where we should not capitulate.…
I have been heavy of heart and mind this week with the mass shooting at the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, which followed a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, which followed a mass shooting at a church in Laguna Woods, California, which followed a mass shooting …, which followed a mass shooting …, which followed a mass shooting …. There have been so damn many mass shootings in this country that one…
Recently, my husband and I were watching an old episode of The New Detectives, a crime show that investigated actual cases, on Netflix. During a particular episode in which a guy was found to have killed an ex-girlfriend, it was revealed that he had been referred for anger management classes. Upon hearing that term, I realized that it seems to have faded away from public consciousness. It was a term that was used a lot…
I have a habit of breaking WordPress websites and putting them back together again. I’ve done so at work a few times and with this particular site. When I say “break,” it’s not that I’m trying to make them completely inoperable. What I’m attempting to do is make them more efficiently operable, usually by combining two separate sites. A little over a year ago, when the pandemic first hit, I didn’t have the energy to…