By Any Other Nerd

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: 6 minutes I've never met someone else named Lance before or maybe just once.  I've met a Lane but not a Lance.  I used to hate my name growing up: Lance Eaton.  It was mana for the folks who wanted to tease and make fun of others (to be clear; I certainly also participated in this because many who are bullied, bully, alas). But there were many refranes that I heard throughout my childhood:  Lance does a dance in his underpants all the way to France.  And of course, I get sent this meme at least once every other month: However, one thing that's interesting in the digital age is the overwhelming awareness of the uniqueness of my name.  There are only a few Lance Eatons out there.  I've come across Lance Eatons who are  a financial account , a realtor , someone serving time , a supposed chiropracto r (the only evidence is his Instagram account--hmmm?) and a mayor . There's also apparently an actor who was in like 4 thing s . S...

Estimated Reading Time: 5.5 minutes This is the 4th installment in a series that reflects my time in January & February 2023 serving on a grand jury in Rhode Island.  You can read about  part 1 ,  part 2 ,  part 3 , & part 4   if you need to catch up. One could use detachment to disengage with this whole process as a way of avoiding the mixture of emotions that are stirred. They certainly wouldn’t be blamed for such a protective approach. In previous pieces, I’ve spoken to the different things that I saw as problematic, challenging, or concerning–the whole system, how others reacted to the idea of grand jury, and the ways we were pushed through the process like cattle. To spend so much time writing about these things should clearly illustrate I had a lot of feelings about it all–a lot of things ran through my head day after day.  So in this post, I’m going to speak a bit more directly to that because while folks were quick to talk about how “interes...

Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes This is the 4th installment in a series that reflects my time in January & February 2023 serving on a grand jury in Rhode Island.  You can read about  part 1 ,  part 2 , and part 3   if you need to catch up. Photo by Andrea Lightfoot on Unsplash The six weeks serving on grand jury duty gave me opportunities to observe (and experience) how human conformity is ever-present and can play an integral role in making the duty more a formality than a process.  While I can’t say for certain this is intentionally part of the overall structure, I can say that it was certainly capitalized upon by the district attorneys that were presenting cases before us.  That is, there were many habits of the jurors and practices by the DAs that facilitated or communicated the conformity of the group. So what did that conformity look like?  The jurors themselves are a good place to start. Each day, the jurors (including myself) sat in the ...

Estimated Reading Time: 6.5 minutes This is the 3rd installment in a series that reflects my time in January & February 2023 serving on a grand jury in Rhode Island.  You can read about part 1 and part 2 if you need to catch up. Overwhelmingly, when I mentioned that I had grand jury duty, I was met with two responses, nearly straight down the line.  In fact, I can remember any other reaction that did not fall into these two buckets.  A few folks did ask how I felt about it before reacting, but when their thoughts were shared, they were typically these buckets. An upfront note here:  While I’m going to break down and explore these responses, they are not critiques of the individuals themselves.  People are people and they’re often doing some level of projection of their own thoughts. They also might not be fully sharing (intentionally or unintentionally), what they bring to the conversation that leads them to that thought.  But in the collective, the f...

Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back by Rebecca Giblin My rating: 5 of 5 stars I'm a big fan of Cory Doctorow and this was now the second Kickstarter of his that I have participated in to help produce an audiobook.  And the money was more than worth it because Giblin and Doctorow bring an analysis of capitalism that is next level.  To me, it goes where Shoshana Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism doesn't and blends in a good deal of Naomi Klein's work about capitalism.  The initial framing of the book focuses on the fact that while we have some safeguards against monopolies, we do not have real safeguards from oligopolies or monopsonies.  Many industries (particularly creative industries such as books, music, film, television, comics, etc) are held up by oligopolies wherein a few large companies control most of the market and because of that, they can (...

Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes So while I have written one piece for the Providence Journal on my experience of grand jury duty , it was but one piece of my experience and there was much more to reflect upon.  So this if the first of a few reflective essays about that.   The concept of jury duty is an interesting one and reminds me of libraries in some ways;  if they were not created in the past, would there actually be collective interest and ability to create them today? I have my doubts that it would and I have my doubts, after serving on the grand jury for 6 weeks, that it would or is the ideal mechanism for justice.   Image from Me2 At its essence, the jury is a collection of peers who help to determine whether a person is legally responsible for a crime or in the case of the grand jury, to stand trial as accused of a crime. They hear all the evidence presented (though not necessarily all the evidence) and then vote on whether the person should be c...

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes We miss things in the AI conversation if we frame AI as a direct replacement for human effort.  The formula is not B equals A.  General and generative artificial intelligence is not going to replace a teacher, therapist, lawyer, social worker, etc in a linear and straightforward fashion. The more that I'm reading about AI and thinking about technology in general as well as looking at how it has played out over the last 20 years, I'm finding that these are the 3 pathways that seem likely. "These aren't the bots you're looking for..." Photo by Mulyadi on Unsplash AI-Enhanced . Though not a new idea, this is still a powerful and valuable one.  It's where a specialist with AI support can do more and higher quality work at a faster clip than before.  Individual work begins to scale in this context; when 1 person with a good AI can do the work of 10, 100, or 1000 specialized people. This is a well-established route for techno...