Every year, I spend some time introducing students to the mechanics of machine learning with neural nets. I definitely don’t go into great depth; I usually only have one class for this. But I try to unpack at least some of the major concepts, so that ML isn’t quite such a black box. Whether you’re…

For managing course materials, UCLA uses a Canvas-based application branded as BruinLearn. I don’t love it! Everything takes too many clicks to accomplish, it’s ugly, and I hate its built-in student-surveillance features. I tend to create a WordPress site for each class I teach, using BruinLearn mainly for submitting assignments and hosting material that’s not…

The title says it all: a couple of weeks ago, I received notification that my tenure and promotion to associate professor is officially approved. I am immensely relieved. I’m fortunate that the whole process was fairly smooth for me, but you just never know, and part of me couldn’t believe that this would ever happen…

We’re staring down the barrel of an extremely bleak future, and yet I’m still teaching every week and doing the best I can. It’s sometimes hard to focus on my classes, but sometimes it’s a relief; I do believe that what we do matters and I would like to keep doing it for as long…

In the spirit of letting no writing go to waste: my friends at Arizona State University asked me to lead a “design studio” on the future of work and caregiving. They asked me to write three introductions, one for each of three “movements,” during which the studio participants were invited to discuss questions about caregiving…

Here I am, still blogging like some kind of caveman. I guess I should be using Substack or Medium or something, but maybe blogs will come back in style, like other artifacts of the ’00s. Anyway, in the past, when people asked me whether I could teach my digital humanities classes online, I hemmed and…

Have I ever felt this angry or trapped in my entire life? Certainly—let me cut you off right there at the pass—the world has seen greater cruelties and outrages. “Broken childcare infrastructure” barely makes the list of world-historical tragedies. And yet for sheer absurdity, for the unbelievable stupidness of this problem, for our steadfast refusal…

This is an edited version of a talk I gave at UC Irvine on February 5, at a symposium organized by Peter Krapp and Geoffrey Bowker. Digital humanities, as we all know, is sexy right now. It seems to be everywhere, including the New York Times, the New Republic, and the Atlantic. Mellon’s funding it,…

I wish I had more time to write this, but I’ve been reading Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection this week and have found that it’s brought some clarity to my thinking about the recent news and coverage of the Mike Brown and Eric Garner cases. In particular, it’s informed my thinking about the photographs circulating around these…

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