Living our best life — look who’s leading in the woods! 🍁🍃🍂

When I saw my sister, who lives in London, the first thing I asked her after how her trip went, was “What the hell is happening to Labour?” It’s like they’re taking a page from the U.S. Dems.

Finally saw Superdog! Though I’m more Marvel than DC Comics, it was yet another superhero movie we needed for 2025. But who is Lex Luthor and why is he Elon Musk?!

Having to write a promotion narrative showing that “I’ve arrived” and have “impact” goes against all my beliefs about how we should value contributions in academia 🤢

Getting ready for my lecture for Dartmouth’s Family Weekend tomorrow! They’re getting the #DataEmpire sneak peek 🤩

🚨 Please be very alarmed. Data errors? Extrajudicial deportation? Unaccounted “self-deportation”? Worse? Or all of the above? Not seeing this in most mainstream media but this is an incredibly bad sign for the 1,200 missing. www.democracynow.org/2025/9/23/he...

Now DATA EMPIRE is US official!

Must have done something right in my last life because the Interfolio case from my Dartmouth tenure case still lets me get to all the PDFs of materials that fall into the weird period between first tenure and Dartmouth tenure.

So grateful to @mmagency.bsky.social, esp. @agentbal.bsky.social who helped me figure out this book (and how to not write like an academic!), and to @christofi.bsky.social at @torvabooks.bsky.social and @sarahhaugen.bsky.social at @harperbooks.bsky.social who are excellent editors. I got so lucky. 🥰

It's UK official! DATA EMPIRE, coming July 9, 2026 🤩

While I appreciate that my promotion case includes everything from the *first* time I got tenure, even though the tenure standards at my last institution (a 4/4 regional public) were wildly different, I am having the absolute worst writer’s block on my narrative because of it.

Good reviews and helpful feedback on a project is a great way to start the week!

The handsomest boy was very brave and led for a bit on an unfamiliar trail today. We were the adult supervision for a couple minutes!

The impact of horsing on my overall fitness is wild. I started Pelotoning again after a break because it helps with chairing stress, and my outputs are almost double what they were before.

The service, while beautiful, did not make this any more real. Still can’t believe it. But being there to celebrate Ricardo’s life and seeing the generations of impact he has had was really meaningful. 💔

Got onto my flight a minute before the door closed so between that and initially booking flights for the wrong date, clearly my subconscious does not wanna. Thank goodness for friends who offer to pick you up from the airport and take you to lunch when you are traveling for a Very Sad ThingTM.

Mark my words, the anti-SLAPP laws (which were a godsend when I got sued over something I only edited and did not even write) will be the next to go.

I know you understand, but I don’t know how *everyone* isn’t up in arms about the level of control being exerted over the mainstream media by the current regime. It’s like they are trying to see just how far they can go and much of the country is essentially saying yes please.

Good thing I realized tonight, not tomorrow when I showed up at Logan, that I booked tickets for the memorial service I need to attend tomorrow for next Friday… fortunately they were reward flights for the shuttle and I was able to move them. Clearly, I am fine.

While I loved losing myself in writing my book all summer, I am kinda loving being back in the land of the living -- getting to see students and colleagues and solve problems that aren't about my inability to write good transitions.

The folks at the little hotel in White River Junction where I stay when I have too much going to also deal with my commute two days in a row are so sweet — they always say, “welcome home” and today the innkeeper said he saw my name on the guest list and was so excited because it had been too long. 🥰

In the services I offer my friends: being put on speaker to provide research-based guidance about social media use to their teens because they will listen to me and not their parents. 😂

Went to the post office to send a baby gift abroad, and the postal worker was surprised when the system asked her to verify that one of the items didn’t contain “obscene content.” 2025, y’all.

I am making the students in my directed study keep a 24 hour diary of their interactions with digital media and, because fair is fair, I'm doing it too. It's only 10:15 and I am horrified at myself.

Tonight’s gem from a friend of nearly 40 years: “This is the real reason more people need Catholic school. Not just to learn grammar, but to learn that actually you are not special.” 💯

Thank you so, SO much to everyone who has recommended, read, and posted reviews of my book! And folks who have come to events! Sold out of 1st printing which is amazing (tho let's not get too excited this is an academic print run 😁), has now been reprinted and in process of restocking. Phew. 📚

I definitely went to school until 24th grade so that one day I could be in the special hell where a faculty member is scheduled for a room with fewer desks than the course cap and arcane policies mean little can be done about this without at least 10 emails. That was on my fourth comps list.

Today is the day all the “I can do that after September 15th”s are coming home to roost.

In denial about having to start fall term tomorrow, but so grateful to have actually gotten a vacation that wasn’t pretending to be on vacation but really writing my book — and to have seen such a beautiful part of the world.

Have arrived back in the lower 48 to discover that apparently people are getting fired for saying things about the fallen MAGA hero — this seems totally normal, definitely a good sign for free speech and having different opinions, just like he dreamed 🤔

My new book from @mitpress.bsky.social, Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right, is out today! The book explores how play and gaming culture have mainstreamed far right ideology through social media platforms. #digitalculture #games #politics #platforms

I checked my email and scheduled Monday morning emails on my flight from Anchorage to SFO like a FIEND deprived of her vice of choice for a week. And now I feel less stressed about the beginning of the term and can just hang out with my beloved (who did not come to Alaska) tomorrow.

Anchorage is incredible - and I saw belugas!

Morning in Whittier! Disembarking and flying back to the East Coast today/tonight after Alaska adventures and an actual, much-needed vacation 🌊🗻

In College Fjord! Somewhere behind me is Dartmouth Glacier. We’ve passed Smith, Vassar, Yale, and Harvard’s. Everyone on the ship is currently at risk of liberal indoctrination.

I wish someone would ASK us about what we do… ask me about my media and migration class, where I assign readings across political perspectives (only caveat: I won’t assign anything that uses “illegal” as a noun) and after class my students beg me to tell them what I think because they aren’t sure.

It is wild to be trapped on a boat with parents who feel really really really sad about someone who enabled a culture of harassment that has on two deeply unpleasant occasions affected their own child, and feel compelled to mention it over and over, but here we are. 🙃

Made it six days before having to take anti-vertigo meds because the open sea up to Anchorage is wild. I am now walking in hilarious zigzags, much to the amusement of my fam, but luckily I feel totally fine. ⛴️ 🌊

Robert Langdon’s Penguin Random House editor in the new Dan Brown book would seriously hate me. Glad he’s not mine 😝

In Glacier Bay National Park! It’s only accessible by boat or plane, so we have National Park Service rangers on board 😍

ChatGPT-gate notwithstanding, we had an awesome roadtrip from Skagway up along the Klondike Highway through the mountains to White Pass, then over the U.S.-Canada border into Yukon to visit an Iditarod musher camp and Emerald Lake — and a good time was had by all.

Let the record show it was a sub-five hour trip.

Of course the thing that was going to cause massive family vacation feud was me having planned a well-researched road trip into the Yukon only to have someone say, “I really think we should check ChatGPT to make sure you are right.” Send life jacket.

Magical, magical Juneau: our whale watching captain told us not to tell the people waiting to get on the next tour about what we saw because it’s rarely like this.

Greetings from Juneau, where three of my family members have now remarked on how easy I have made a complicated trip and how patient I am with everyone’s millions of questions — and it’s almost like they don’t realize that I’m a department chair so this is what I do for a living.

After a day of adventure split up in Ketchikan we all decided to watch a movie, and I would never have predicted that the live-action Lilo & Stitch (which I adore) would be so wildly popular with my whole fam that a half hour later my dad can’t stop talking about how great it is 🥰

Greetings from the 49th state — and my 46th visited state! 🌄

The good thing about being on vacay with not 1 but 3 doctors - one ortho, another ER - is that they all agree that I didn’t re-fracture my foot and it’s just swollen and painful because I have been doing so much walking over the last two days. And they are letting me go ziplining. 🩺🥼

I had a 100 minute aromatherapy hot stone massage, a gift from my sister for finishing the full draft of my book, and it was the greatest thing ever. 😌

My choice of trip swag for my fam was 💯, if I do say so myself.