ChatGPT was all over the news last week as reporters and professors tried out the AI. The underlying software is based on GPT 3.5, and GPT 3.5 and GPT 3 had a similar week of experimentation and wonder. All three use machine…

You may have heard these three topics talked about together recently and thought, what is that about, and do I care? This is a quick summary of what that is about so you can decide if you care. The summary mostly comes from a BBC podcast, The Coming Storm, Episode…

Many school districts, and even some states, are having intense and sometimes violent disagreements about mask mandates. The people who are against the mask mandates, according to polls, are in the minority. An overwhelming 72%-28% of those surveyed by USA TODAY and Ipsos called mask mandates “a matter of health…

Women and the descendants of enslaved people* can now vote, too. The Supreme Court just made a momentous decision about voting rights. I started thinking, so how much power did white men lose when they had to start sharing votes with the rest of us? To determine how much power…

The above video is by a Black man who doesn’t want his children to be taught about systemic racism because he worries that this will make them feel they cannot be anything they want to be. In the United States, we set a lot of store by the individual…

Thank you all as you came with me on my journey through the passage of HB 3979 in Texas. If Texas Governor Abbott does push to revisit the law in a special legislative session, I may need to write more, but for now, some concluding thoughts. I have been struggling…

This blog series attempts to clarify what is happening with legislation and conversation around Critical Race Theory in the United States, starting generally, and then specifically what happened in Texas. Fox News, as can be seen above, is mentioning Critical Race Theory more and more frequently. At the same time…

I am still gnawing at this bone of the laws being passed to stop teachers from teaching “Critical Race Theory” in K-12 schools. I feel like I’m swimming in place because some of the information I want doesn’t seem to be available. I spent most of yesterday trying to track…

The Texas Law: what it was and what it became As Part 1 and Part 2 of this series described, some states are using Executive Order 13950 as a guide to limit the teaching of certain concepts in public school social study curricula. On July 15, 2021, Texas Governor Abbot…