Changing Direction

Edit:  This whole move thing is still leaving me pretty busy (even though it’s been long enough afterwards to not be an excuse). This is going to stick on hiatus for a bit still. For I am excellent at putting things on hiatus.

It might have been a small eon or two since I’ve posted.
[guilty face]

But hey, life is strange, windy, and it. has. been. a. long. last. year. A new job, a new city, and plenty of excellent life-lessons learned. While I may have been out of the #SciComm writing game for a while, I’ve been putting that time to good use building a better me.

That said, it’s time to get busy bleeding ink again — this time with a bit of a new direction.

When I first started this blog, I largely intended it as a space to explore societal issues through the lens of science and data. At the same time, my job had (still has) me very interested in how the dynamic of science communication plays out. I’ve penned probably more than was warranted of that here already, and now I’m ready for new horizons and to get back to the site’s original intent.

There are a lot of ideas I want to explore and challenging thoughts I want to address. Ones that I am absolutely not at all qualified to tackle. But that’s kind of the point. We live in a very complex and opinionated society, and as such, parsing out how to feel, what to believe, how to live is not easy. We are swamped by opinions, loud voices, and just the sheer, overwhelming amount of material to wade through. And in that mire, the facts, the data, the truths (as best as we can “know” them) are often just a quiet, shy voice.

So here’s an experiment:
What can your average guy reasonably find and understand about these issues? What data, studies, and objective information are out there to inform how we think and how to live well in this world of complicated selves interwoven with diverse others? To what extent can an individual pull that information together to create an informed opinion?

Enter the next series of posts, and my place to explore said plethora of ideas — some contentious, some esoteric, some just personal inquiries, but all to my best ability with a focus on what actual data or objective realizations we have available to us. For each topic, I hope to synthesize whatever goodies of information I find into its own space, both for my own benefit of learning but also to make it easier for anyone else exploring those topics.

I’ll mix in a little opining (I mean I couldn’t not), but the point is to allow what is learned to sculpt the landscape of my opinion, rather than the other way around. To that end, I expect each post to more likely exist as a living thing, updated accordingly as new information comes in. Similarly, if some reader sees an important piece of information I’m missing, I hope they will kindly add in the suggestion ^{(…but. expect an utter lack of mercy for those who can’t engage civilly)}.

It’s of course worth noting then that I definitely expect these posts to occasionally be wrong, ignorant, and generally incomplete. All I can offer is my best earnest attempt at pulling together what we know and what is accessible to all of us. And then update them as I learn more.

That’s life though — the path to Truth involves stumbling along the way.
But if we want to live better lives in a better world, it’s at least a step on the path.