Decimating Design

I’m part of the generation that grew up on the first wave of cyberpunk, from movies like Blade Runner and television shows like Max Headroom, to countless books and graphic novels. There’s a lot to be said about how this work may have influenced our attitudes and philosophies, but one of the things that always caught my eye, probably because I was so young, was the visual motif of television/computer screens everywhere. The idea of being able to walk someplace and literally be unable to…

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#OKAsshole

Today is the nineteenth anniversary of me launching the .org, so perhaps it was fitting that I used the topic of nostalgia as a launching-off point for my class discussions this past week. By having my students look at the arguments around them about whether or not things were better “back in the day” than they are now — for example, by comparing the old-school rap of my early years to the mumble rap of today — I tried to get my students thinking about…

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Beyond All Repair

What Betsy DeVos got wrong about Detroit schools (Detroit Free Press)Education Secretary Betsy DeVos held in civil contempt for violating judge’s order on student loan collection (USA Today) I don’t read that many novels about war — I haven’t been reading many novels at all lately, since I’m chin-deep in research for my next non-fiction book — but I’ve read the same scene in more than a couple of novels, and it’s kind of stuck in my head since I realized how frequently I’ve seen…

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Settling In

This Tuesday will be the third anniversary of Mom’s passing, and in some ways it’s felt like the hardest anniversary I’ve had to deal with so far. I’ve been thinking about the anniversary in the days leading up to it more than I have the others, and I’ve taken the day off work. (The first anniversary fell on a Sunday, so there weren’t any issues there, but the second was on a Monday when I did teach a class at eight in the morning, but…

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Coming Out Ace(s)

About Ace Week (aceweek.org) A little over a year ago, I did an interview on the Asexual Artists website where I talked about my work and how my asexuality influences my life. It was kind of my public coming-out as an asexual, although many of my friends had known for a while. I recall that I wanted to write more about my asexuality after that interview came out, but it was published the same month that I got offered my teaching job and had to…

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