Sometimes, you just want to know you’re not alone.
This newsletter talks about what’s really going on in the world, with an unfiltered but empathetic perspective. I have a Ph.D. in English, but I study language and communication, including the history of both. This is where I go to post my blunt thoughts about politics, culture, and education.
A few years ago, I didn’t think I’d be writing about pathogens and pandemics, but circumstances compelled me to start speaking up against mainstream narratives that I found harmful and counterproductive. I saw populism and wishful thinking overpowering the saner voices in the room. It disturbed me. I couldn’t keep quiet, so I started posting my opinions online.
There’s an edge in my writing, and that’s because I’ve spent most of my career working with marginalized students from some of the poorest school districts in the entire country, arguably the entire world. If you’ve worked as a public servant, you know how deeply infuriating it can feel to watch so many of your efforts get undone by poor leadership and public apathy.
I’ve often thought about leaving education over the last few years. There might come a day when I have to resign to protect myself and my family, or I might get fired for doing what I consider the right thing. (Tenure used to mean something, but universities can always get rid of troublemakers.) In the meantime, this newsletter keeps me going, and I hope it keeps others going.
A service which tracks changes to Twitter profiles, name changes, pinned tweet changes... authenticate with Twitter or Github.
Every user account has its onw RSS feed, incidentally.
A utility for analyzing .pdf documents to extract older changes to the text and view previous editions (good for un-redaction?) as well as scrubbing the document history so that no one else can do the same thing to your docs.