Article Progress #1

For the heck of it, i'll list out what the current articles I'm actively working on are, because I have an interesting batch coming up.

1. An analysis of textbooks over the past 100 years or so. I look at a section or two from an Algebra textbook, and compare that across about half a dozen textbooks from history. I see how the new teaching methods compare to the older methods. To spoil you on the punchline: the older textbooks were super interesting because they were a lot more proof-based than today's example-based books with "relatable" examples featuring sports or rock stars or whatever. The old books were a lot more about math for math's sake, and for actually explaning the math rather than hand-waving it away as "you need it for the test". Problem is though that those older textbooks are dense and verbose and a pain to read.

2. I'm looking at the history of transgender people on the internet. Specifically, I'm looking at about the year 2000, trawling through Geocities and old forums and such and just trying to paint a picture of what the vibe is like. Half because this is an under-discussed and under-appreciated struggle as trans people finally can connect to one another electronically over BBSes and Geocities page, half as a counterpoint to the blatant anti-trans rumblings that are really starting to pick up steam, especially in the UK. Trans people were always here, they just used to hang out in geocites.com/WestHollywood and publish lists of safe establishments to go to. It's only recently that they've finally got enough leverage on the legal system to start making changes.

3. Looking back at the history of computer terminals, and looking in-depth at the more oddball ones. The vector graphics, the sixels, the block terminals, heck, I even have a section about teletypes for the deaf because it turns out they fought AT&T to invent the acoustic coupler which let modems be a thing. So that's cool.

4. A possibly recurring "best of Neocities / the Indie Web" article series where I spotlight a few indie websites (usually on Neocities) that I like.

1 and 3 are the closest to completion. 2 and 4 I'm still on the research phase for.

I also have a lot of "backburner" articles that are half-drafted but I abandoned for one reason or another. Among those include:

• "A hasty introduction to anarchism"

• A discussion about the aromantic spectrum (which i wrote while processing the fact that i might be aromantic?)

• "The Empath and the Witch", just kind of an attack of the "facts > feelings" talk by discussing the subcultures of people who like to shape and confront emotions head-on. This needs more research.

• "The Perils of File Typing", which really I could probably just clean up and publish very soon, looking at it.

• An article on how to write modern javascript without falling into the rabbithole of NPM. Also pretty close to complete, but needs a little more. I just forgot about it, I suppose.

• A look at the Spaceball 2003, an odd input device. Currently blocked because I don't have a system that supports it on hand at the moment (it has a serial port and the Linux joystick emulator thing I wrote for it seems to be busted)

• "Tour of a Better World", which I already published on this phlog. Was canned because of the rise of the CHAZ, which I wanted to see play out before I continued.

fwiw the Frontpage article that I published recently (which everyone seemed to love, including literally Tim Berners-Lee?!) was from this "backburner" lot. Spent a day polishing that up and taking new screenshots. I could have had that out in 2016 easily, but I felt a bit tangled up in my words back then. I guess. I dunno.