The Stovepipe Memorandum

Because it's not all about me.

The fool I am, I believe that there is a time and a place for everything. While I may ‘go there’ into every nook and cranny of my curiosity, I’m about do, not about be. As a consequence I am horrible when it comes to marketing myself or branding myself. I’m about ideas and solutions, I’m not about me.

All that is to explain why I am now publishing four different ‘stacks here on the platform. While Stoic Observations is the flagship and sets the philosophical and personal tone (I hope), there are three others that may deserve some of your attention with the newest just introduced this month.

Hybrid Homeschool
This brand new project is one I hope receives that right amount of attention. It is part of my dedication to K-12 parents and students in finding the right kind of support network and resources. Because I go there, I get a lot of cross-pollination of ideas from concerned parents, educators, educational programs and political actions dedicated to preserve what’s best for our young people and to innovate where we are moribund and/or inefficient. What I have learned as an affluent parent is that there are a set of ‘tiger mom’ activities, programs and connections that are motivational as well as capable of generating enthusiasm and discipline necessary to elevate students beyond the basics. I think we can do better as Americans. The Hybrid Homeschool project is just that. Many Americans have been beating the dead horse of ‘school choice’ and ‘vouchers’ for decades now. It’s ironic that many of those same folks echo rhetoric against government handouts. I say public schools are going to be what they are, and that parents and students who want better actually have better. It’s not social media, it’s something else. Hybrid Homeschool is about exposing that something better. Let’s get into it.

Human Race Man
I really hate having to do race man work. The fact of the matter is that there has been a massive reset and derailment of the most practical and sane concepts of citizenship in the wake of the death of George Floyd. The attending phenomena has made me rethink and abandon investment in racial identity and low-dimensional identity which are the boundaries of how me mediate our citizenship and sense of belonging in America. We all need to recognize that race is at 15th century concept and we need to debunk it and stop using and abusing it in all of our communications. As I always say, Amazon has figured out how to make billions for its employees and shareholders without ever asking about race, headquartered in a state where slavery was never legal. It’s one of the things I understand well, and will continue to make contemporary commentary as well as publish prior work.

Tessellations
It is quite the irony that of the things I know well, I almost never talk about the tactics and strategies of my career as a data engineer. The quick and dirty explanation is that back in 1999, at the very inception of the read/write internet, my boss threatened me for even mentioning what might be product futures. Plus, you know, NDAs and all that. Nevertheless, I have figured out how to write around such restraints and talk tech, sci-fi and other particularly geeky stuff. This I’m going to do a bit more of for the benefit of my mentees and people a bit further up the ladder than K-12 families. Along with my slavish devotion to BBGo, I write a bit here every now and then. I hope it can explain with a bit more specificity what kind of thinking leads me to Popperian discipline.

Give one a shot. Heck go for all of them. You’re curious aren’t you?