By Any Other Nerd

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes I mentioned in my last post that I'd be talking a bit more about something that is giving me hope and a way to think about how to navigate the next few years (or rest of my life--take your pick).   And while I don't usually make blog titles so explicit, I really needed to with this one. I listened to  Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching by Jarvis Givens a few years ago and it's all I can think about since the current administration decided it wanted to root out anything related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. I recently had to relisten to it and read sections of it as well. Since January 2025, I've mentioned the book dozens of times if I've mentioned it once.  The book explores the work of Carter G. Woodson and other Black educators in the 1900s.  Carter G. Woodson 's impact is significant.  He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1912 and would play an important role in shaping t...

Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes I've been reviewing books, audiobooks, and graphic novels for years. Currently, it's mostly been young adult graphic novels for Publishers Weekly. Recently, I was enjoying a really great graphic novel. One that had me smiling because it focused on a young teen coming into their sexuality. The story didn't talk down to its reader and yet was sweet, kind, and complex with everyone in the story. It sought to understand the tensions and elevate the love. It's the kind of book that was non-existent in my teenage years. And the thing is, the reoccurring thought going through my head as I read was this: this book is going to be banned in the very communities that it is needed.  The thought played into all the feels I've been navigating--for the last few years but more heightened in the last year, when it felt very evident that Trump would win re-election. And now, in the face of the first monrh of his administration, has left me in a chal...

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes Once again, I've gotten another piece published in the Providence Journal (I had this one published in February ).  I don't know if that's a reflection of my ability to write or lower journalistic standards these days and newspapers lacking a lot of folks doing this kind of thing.  A little bit of both, mayhaps.  This one came to me in a flurry last week--that's not entirely true.  I've been writing this piece in my head for over a year--ever since I first encountered it last year and continued to mull about the elements that colluded to make something like this possible.  On Tuesday, June 6, I was cycling along Narragansett Parkway in Cranston, and sure enough, the chairs were back.  As I continued on my bike ride, the urge to write consumed me and as soon as I was at my desk, the words flew.  So, here you have it.   They titled it " Parade delivers another lesson on colonizing " but I preferred my title bel...

How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America by Heather Cox Richardson My rating: 4 of 5 stars In the wake of the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection, this book feels all the more poignant and essential for reading and understanding the modern party politicals of the Republican Party. While the book starts in the founding of the country, its major focus (as the title indicates) is understanding how the pretext of the Civil War and its aftermath reinforced a central privileging of white men at the disregard and disposal of women and people of color, who despite legal changes in the 1800s were still marginalized and second-class citizens throughout the 1800s, 1900s, and even still in the 2000s. The central argument that she makes is that the founders of the country and the leaders of the South invoked the language of freedom and individualism as the grounds of the United States,...

Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi My rating: 5 of 5 stars Taibbi aims to provide an updated version of Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent adapted to integrate the last thirty years of mass media practice coupled with Taibbi's own insider views and criticism about how media across all divides is failing the US in profound ways. His argument is not new (media is failing us) but his take that all mainstream popular news outlets (TV, radio, print-based, digitally based) are complicit in this destruction because they're all playing to specific audiences is rather important. Taibbi explores and explains how news entities continue to focus on a portion of the audience they believe they can maintain by offering a particularly biased focus and forgo trying to win over other news consumers. The result is that most people end up paying attention to the news media that fits their politi...

Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change by Eitan Hersh My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is the book that so many of us need to read, thinking about, and act upon.  Hersh's argument is that there are a lot of people who believe they are politically active because they are engaged in daily news binging and social media arguments but not actually involved in political acts that help to expand one's influence or power.  Primarily, these folks (myself included here) know a lot about the national level blow-by-blow and have deeply-held beliefs about politics but find themselves less likely to do much to build a political powerbase (or support one) to enact change.  Hersh provides different reasons for this.  Sometimes, it's the disconnect between the moral philosophy of the participants (or nonparticipants as they were) and the fact that they would have to actually compromise and navigate comp...

Democracy in Danger: How Hackers and Activists Exposed Fatal Flaws in the Election System by Jake Braun My rating: 4 of 5 stars Braun's work makes for a very uncomfortable read about the current state of affairs with the US election system.  He effectively captures the critical issues that permeate the technical and political infrastructure of the US election system to show how a perfect storm of events could easily undermine any sense of democracy and the belief in a democratically-elected government.  His evidence and his argument show how Americans are largely fooled by the current discourse on "hackers" interfering in our election to make us think it is a simple singular issue or two or that somehow, we'll actually know it happens.  Instead, he traces the many different entry points with Russia, China, or really, anyone could easily disrupt the process.  Often, these are small ways such as hacking the voter rolls and changing/removing 5%. That...

Estimated Reading Time: 2.5 minutes Yesterday, I posted recommendations about how to get through this week in ways that have us turning away from news and into other things such as turning towards reflection, projects, or community.  My friends came up with a really great list of things to do that I'm sure many of us can appreciate and borrow from .   The list is great in terms of what to do instead but I also realized there were things that can be done to better ensure that I can actually do those things and not be distracted or sucked into the misinformation, disinformation, and free-association interpretation that passes for political discourse in various news outlets in both analog and digital formats.  So I thought I'd follow yesterday's list with a some specific actions that I'm taking to help with that.  I share these not because they are particularly new or innovative but to provide others with some ideas or specific actions worth doing.   1. I...

Estimated Reading Time: 2.5 minutes Anyone who is paying attention to the world of 2020 US politics, knows that this week is going to be one more tense rollercoaster of angst, confusion, frustration, and anger for so many folks--regardless of where one sits politically.  Much of this is both a result of the way US politics have trended over the last 20 years, particularly influenced and made more extreme both by political partisanship, traditional media outlets (newspaper, television, radio), digital media (blogs, online news, Youtube, and much more), and social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, 4Chan).  Together, they are reinforcing different realities, amplifying misinformation, increasing disinformation, and festering the growth of conspiracy theories like never before.   Thus, we enter the final days of an election season that has felt like it has been running since 2016 in a year when we have been hit by a global pandemic, economic disaster, and a raci...

Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free by Cody Wilson My rating: 1 of 5 stars Wilson gained fame and notoriety as one of the earliest, if not the first person to design and use a 3D printed gun. This book tells his account of how it went from idea to manifestation along with the challenges he ran into, the support (financial, intellectual, technical), and the ideologies that fueled his thinking as he moves through the process. On its face-value, the book has something to offer many folks about understanding both the legal issues and concerns around 3D printing of guns as well as 1st and 2nd Amendment rights. Even learning about how and why the 3D gun was created could be quite valuable but Wilson's prose are too often pseudo-literary flourishes attempting to show how brilliant and above the rest of humanity he is--of course, this comes to clash with his self-described crypto-anarchism (nothing says anarchist like publishing with a major p...

Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters by Aph Ko My rating: 4 of 5 stars Pulling together posts they have published over the years on Black Vegans Rock, Sisters, Aph and Syl Ko offer up a compelling argument for veganism people of color and other marginalized groups. The crux of their argument is that the willingness for humans to arbitrarily decide who gets human treatment and who gets animal treatment (who is a free being and who is an enslave mass for labor, slaughter, and consumption) means that marginalized groups will always be vulnerable to being "dehumanized" and thus subjected to inhumane treatment. Until people reconsider their relationship with all animals, humans will continue to leave the door open to doing horrific harm to one another. What's powerful about their argument is that they do not just put this in simple terms of veganism--rather they deeply ground their argument in the theoretical and con...

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Pérez My rating: 4 of 5 stars Criado-Pérez delves into the data or rather, often, absence of data or data disaggregated by gender in order to show to the readers how that creates problematic and sexist experiences for women throughout the world from the (literal) playground to the urban setting to refugee encampments to the corporate office to even democratic countries. Like color-blindness, Criado-Pérez shows that when we approach our world--a world that historically privileged men and men's preferences--with gender-blindness, we often default to what we consider is the norm; always forgetting that the norm does preference males throughout our society. This is less about the pay-gap and more about the structural features that make the modern world harder for women because men are the default. A primary example she draws out early on about this is the mere idea of prioritizing snow removal...

Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism by Terry McAuliffe My rating: 2 of 5 stars As a book recounting the events of Charlottesville in 2017 from the hindsight vantage point of Terry McAuliffe, the governor at the time, the book was interesting. As a book representing a "Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism" and moving "Beyond Charlottesville", it felt disingenuous and disappointing. And while I get that authors don't always get to choose the names for their book, this title promised much and delivered little. McAuliffe is useful in providing context for how he navigates the complex issues rising up to and the aftermath, spending ample time reaffirming that Virginia is (supposedly) no place for white supremacy and that the President of the United States failed at his job to call out white supremacy in a clear, unequivocal manner. So, at the end of the day, McAuliffe does th...

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars Michael Lewis (of Moneyball fame) takes readers on a tour of government that you'll never find on the news or even presented by government itself--not because it's a malicious or abusive aspect but it's often essential and important parts of government, who are also banned from sharing out the amazing work that they do. Lewis is searching for the different ways in which long-standing government institutions are on a precipice of decay, self-destruction, and funding shortages. This foreboding risks that jeopardize our health, infrastructure, and ability to function day to day are threatened because of a long tradition by the Right to defund government, assume much of tax dollars are wasted, abused, or mismanaged, and to believe that the market will always do better. Lewis's lens for exploring this is the transition from Obama to Trump and how unprepared Trump was to fill hundreds of vacant pos...

90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality by Allison Yarrow My rating: 5 of 5 stars Yarrow's jaunt down the 1990s through the prism of gender is so much better than any CNN documentary. She delves into how gender was represented in media and culture throughout the 1990s from Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place to the sexual scandals of Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton to the female music icons (Gwen Stefani, Courtney Love, Fiona Apple, Britney Spears, and others) to the murder trial of OJ Simpson and Marsha Clark. It's a cornucopia of reflections around the many different issues that arose and as someone who grew up in the 1990s, I appreciated this renewed look at how gender played out in politics, pop culture, and even education. It helped me understand some of the more problematic assumptions or thoughts that I had at the time and where they came from. Yarrow's skill is in her multipronged approach of given the context of e...

I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations by Sarah Stewart Holland My rating: 3 of 5 stars In general, this is a heart-warming book by two people trying to do their best to bridge the divides that are so prevalent within our culture, particularly along political lines. It's refreshing and appreciated in that regard and it comes clearly from a place of wanting to recognize the dignity and humanity (or "grace" as they say) of each human. In that regard, wanting to recognize our respective humanity and a willingness to try to understand, I am trying to do so with these authors as well. Because I do appreciate their efforts and their desire, I think they do fall short in some profound ways. Their goals to bridge the divide with at least listening and a recognition of the nuance that permeates nearly all issues we encounter is certainly important. They provide numerous examples of this that help to hig...