April 28, 2020
A Black Hole’s Gravity is Like a Spirograph
Space and time are not fixed–or more accurately, seemingly fixed or regular movement across spacetime is actually “warped.” That warping causes the trajectory of motion to manifest as dynamic rather than nondynamic. A straight line is never really…
April 21, 2020
Truly Toxic Speech: When It Comes to Pandemics, We Really Talk Too Much
This was already in the news last December, and not in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic. A UC-Davis study had found that “the louder people talk, the more airborne particles they emit, making loudness a potential factor in spreading…
March 22, 2020
How Women in AI are Changing the Face of Tech and Campaigns
“Life doesn’t always give us what we deserve, but rather, what we demand. And so you must continue to push harder than any other person in the room.” Those words from Wadi Ben-Hirki, a young feminist activist from Nigeria, are a good reminder that…
March 10, 2020
Big Data Can Track Students. Can It Improve Education?
From the EdSurge news page, we learn that colleges and universities are discovering the benefits of big data. It’s no secret that colleges and universities have to do a lot more with less these days—or face closure. Whether because of high…
March 2, 2020
High-Tech Treehouse Roundup
Even for the most austere person who doesn’t need lavish, exotic, or elaborate surroundings, there is something fascinating about treehouses. Not the kind that are every kid’s dream and every parent’s bad trip. If you were a kid who grew up in…
February 25, 2020
Smithsonian Opens the Digital Doors
When we’re working in digital, one of the hairiest issues can be finding appropriate imagery and other resources to build on without stepping on a creator’s rights or paying through the nose. That’s why you see so many blogs and social media posts…
January 24, 2020
Voter Turnout: Throw More Parties?
On voting, Americans tend to swing widely between the hyperbole of having an inviolable moral obligation to vote in every single election for every single position, to believing that if elections could really change anything, “they’d make them…
December 23, 2019
Cryptocurrency Beyond Good and Evil
In Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche lists “objection, evasion [and] joyous distrust” as signs of health. By that standard, and perhaps that standard only, cryptocurrency’s public image is healthy. I mean, if you do a search for crypto…
December 23, 2019
Space Debris and Cooperation
Space debris is a big problem. There’s a whole lot of it orbiting our planet, fragments and parts and stuff crashing into one another to produce even more, from dangerous large bits to even more dangerous small bits that are harder to detect. It…
November 12, 2019
Corporate Spending on 2019 Municipal Elections: Mixed Results in Seattle
The story that will emerge from the 2019 Seattle, Washington elections should be of interest to anyone working in campaigns, from data appending and other management services to more ephemeral strategists. The big picture part of the story is this:…