Category: Uncategorized
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This is why we can’t have nice things: Elizabeth Warren, Misogyny, and the Death of Expertise
As I watched the results of Super Tuesday roll in I felt my heart breaking. Elizabeth Warren was my candidate, but she was so much more than that. As a fellow woman and policy wonk, Warren’s compassion, indignation, and attention to the small details of structural change made me believe that there was a way…
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Ursula K. Le Guin, Marie Kondo, and moving on
A year ago today Ursula K. Le Guin died. I cannot overstate the importance of her work to my life. In her honor, I decided to spend a year reading works by women authors only (with an exception for work materials or other necessary texts). Over the past year I have rediscovered and been introduced…
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Baking Gingerbread, as a DH project
Earlier today I was trying to put together slides for a workshop called “Getting Started in DH.” And I just couldn’t get started. For the record, I have given versions of this workshop more times than I can remember. I have slides from those workshops, and looking them over, I despaired. DH is so big,…
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Ads on LinkedIn targeting women make me want to delete my account
I have a LinkedIn profile. As someone who is about to hire three programmers to work in my research center at Princeton University, I may find it helpful in reaching top candidates. That’s assuming I don’t delete my account over the insulting banner ads I am treated to almost every time I log in. First…
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The value of non-rare books: paperback musings of a digital humanist
Sometime last January I realized I was book-deprived. Since September I had been shuttling back and forth among my new office in Princeton, my rented room in town, and the apartment I used to live in with my husband in Boston. One Saturday morning in snowbound Boston I awoke in my old bed to a…
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Desiderata for A Digital Humanist: My Ada Lovelace Day Tribute to Elli Mylonas
So I always forget about Ada Lovelace Day. Maybe it’s because my childhood hero was Marie Curie . . . and Madeline Albright — clearly I was always going to end up in DH. But this year is important, because I want to highlight a woman I have worked with for three years, and who…
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Tales from the Port: Part 2 — Migrating the Database
In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have promised to write a blog post every night this week. The port has been going well, but I’ve been working late each night, and it’s just too hard to write clear English prose starting at midnight. So here, at last, is the promised post on migrating Project Quincy’s database…
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Ten Years Gone
Ten years ago it was Tuesday. I was riding my bike along Long Island Sound, saying goodbye to one of the few things I knew I would miss about living in Connecticut. Ten years ago my family was three days away from moving into Brooklyn. We were finally going to be city dwellers again for…
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Trees
(with apologies to Joyce Kilmer) I think that I shall never see A graph as lovely as a tree. A tree whose thick, strong root is prest Against the lower bound at rest; A tree that looks a little strange While its data does self arrange; A tree that may grow up or out But…
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Great Teachers Never Die
A new semester starts tomorrow, and I’m thinking of my grandmother, Marjorie Good. She was an artist, whether she held a paintbrush in her right hand or used her left hand to play boogie-woogie on the piano. I’m thinking of her right now because she was also a teacher. She taught English for nineteen years…