Category Archives: reflections & rants

Dear esteemed members of the press,

Dear esteemed members of the press,

I am in the field collecting data and then will be attending a conference. I am not able to respond right now. Do not call my house phone. Do not pester my department. And do *NOT* hound my subletter. All press inquiries should be sent to press [at] danah.org. When I can, I respond. When I can’t, I don’t. Do not use other email addresses – I check the press one from my phone and answer them in order when I have spare cycles. Other requests are typically ignored.

The BBC coverage of my blog essay is hugely problematic. If you want to discuss what I’ve written, please read the essay itself. This is not a formal report. This is a blog essay based on observations from the field. And this is not a 6-month study; it is a 4-year study with a tide shift that I’ve noticed in the last 6 months. Again, read the essay. At some point, I will turn this into a formal article, but this is not that. Cover it as you see fit, but do not call it a report.

Thank you,
THE MANAGEMENT

woah…. omg. reflections on mega-viewership

Wow. ::jaw on floor:: When I posted my article last night, I sent it to some friends and academic lists figuring that it would stir a conversation. I figured that some usual suspects would read it and offer valuable critiques. I was not expected Slashdot, Digg, Metafilter, del.icio.us/popular, Reddit, and other aggregators to pick it up.

Meme flow on the web intrigues me. When I post a well-thought out, well-written analysis, I get a few thousands hits and maybe a BoingBoing mention. So far, I’ve received 90K hits for this latest piece, the most problematic of essays I’ve ever shared publicly. Figures.

I know that there are problems in that essay (and I tried to caveat and caveat away till I annoyed myself). So I am not surprised that folks are up in arms about all sorts of things. Still, the response is fascinating. I guess there’s nothing like something problematic to get a conversation started, eh?

I can’t decide if the response is good or bad. I’m clearly getting raked through the coals by lots of folks from lots of different perspectives. I actually find this quite constructive and helpful. I’m getting a lot of feedback from teens, parents, teachers, youth ministers, and other non-tech audiences which is extremely thought provoking. The feedback varies tremendously in tone and content. Some folks are saying I’m completely right; some are telling me I’m dead wrong. The latter clearly gives me an opportunity to follow up with folks that I’m not representing well and I hope that it’ll be a chance to learn what I’m missing.

I think some folks misinterpreted this piece as an academic article. No doubt this is based on my observations from the field, but this is by no means an academic article. I did add some methodological footnotes in the piece so that folks would at least know where the data was coming from. But I didn’t situate or theorize or contextualize this at all. It’s more like publicizing field observations. There’s much work to be done before this can be anything resembling an academic article. The “citation” note at the top of my pieces also confuses this. That was meant for when people picked it up and stole it whole from my page or when people got to it indirectly. I put that as a standard for my blog essays a while back because of this issue. I guess I see my blog as a space to work out half-formed ideas. I just didn’t expect 90K people to read it. Blog essays to me are thoughts in progress, blog entries that are too long to be blog entries. But I can see where there’s confusion.

I also clearly pissed off the academics by inappropriately appropriating academic terms in an attempt to demarcate groups. I intentionally picked two that have a political valence meant to hit at some of the crunchiness; I went back and forth with terms and decided to repurpose academic ones since they work as better metaphors than most everyday terms that I could think of. For example, I hate how poorer populations or marginalized populations are always framed as powerless so I appropriated an academic term (“subaltern”) that comes from post-colonial studies when work was done to give power to the voices of subaltern soldiers in India. Still, I want better terms and am hoping someone has suggestions.

I’m still wading through the responses. I’m still floored by the responses. I’ve been in the air and offline all day so I haven’t had a chance to go through everything. But in the next few days I will and I will respond. And I *really* appreciate the feedback and critique. I think some good can come out of this unbelievable feedback.

I also need to get my head around the fact that sharing something problematic has sparked more of a conversation and reflection than being precise. In some senses, this bothers me. At the same time, inciting people to think is exactly what I want. So I am feeling very bewildered. Is the way to make change to present something problematic so that people have to engage by disagreeing? Hmm..

More soon…

“Sicko”, Barack, and Danny Pearl

The last two days have been a complete trip. I woke up yesterday expecting to drive to Hartford to prep for my speech when i realized that New York was two hours from Hartford (or so i thought because i forgot about traffic) so i decided to “swing by” New York to see the premier of Michael Moore’s new film “Sicko.” I had watched a bunch of it online but i really wanted to see it live with people and i’m *so* glad i did. I made it to Manhattan in time to catch the 7:45 showing. Little did i know, Michael Moore was in the audience seeing how people would react. The women behind me “uh huhed” and “oh yeahed” and “you go girled” the whole way through – i think they approved. The audience loved it. I loved it. “Sicko” is hands down Michael Moore’s best film to date and i strongly encourage everyone to get out there and see it next weekend for opening. For those who don’t know how the film industry works, opening weekend means the world. How many tickets are sold that weekend dictate how long the film can be in the theaters. So if you watched it online, just buy a ticket for next weekend to show solidarity and support. It’s critical that this film get seen far and wide in the US, or at least far enough for folks to make a stink.

Personally, this film is very important to me. As many of you know, i broke my neck when i was 16 in a freak accident. I didn’t have health insurance. It cost $88K. That debt still haunts me. I wasn’t able to get the right physical therapy because of money. My neck still causes me problems on a daily basis. I’m not eligible for independent health insurance and my fear of being uninsured makes me panic about a post-grad school future. I have often wondered who i would marry to get insured. There is no one to blame but when i had my accident, everyone told me to sue the school because of the medical costs. I couldn’t justify this in my own conscience. It kills me that every accident requires someone to blame or else you aren’t covered. I don’t want to live in that kind of a society.

Luckily, i think that there’s a health care theme going on in discourse these days. This morning, i had the great fortune of hearing Barack Obama speak at the United Church of Christ’s Synod in Hartford (where i had the honor of speaking about why youth are using social network sites). It was truly inspiring to see Barack speak in person and he got a standing ovation when he announced that he would sign a universal health care plan into existence in his first four years should he be elected. He really energized the audience and it made me smile to see so much optimism (without the pure politicking) in a candidate.

After yapping with folks all day, i realized i needed to zone out or i was going to completely lose it so i went to see A Mighty Heart. I can’t say the movie was brilliant, but it was good to see Angelina connect her politics to her films and the story of Danny Pearl is just heartwrenching.

Oh and while i’m being all daily life documentary here, apologies for the low blogging levels lately… i’ve been running around more chaotically than normal (even for me). I gave up this month and subletted my apartment. I will be traveling at near continuous levels between now and November 1. On the plus side, starting in November, i will be locking myself in my apartment (no conferences, no talks, no consulting) to write. The light at the end of the tunnel is starting to appear and i can’t tell you how excited i am to begin writing the dissertation/book. I suspect to be gone from public life between November and June but i also suspect that i will be blogging more (as being locked up in my apartment tends to encourage that). But i will give you more updates on that as things progress. I hope everyone is well!

Oh, and go see Sicko!!! Pretty please!

Cannes Film Festival

That ridiculous picture to the left is me walking the stairs at the Cannes Film Festival. ::giggle:: I came to Cannes to give a keynote about youth and their engagement with film and new media. In return, i got tickets to the opening night of the festival, including a short by David Lynch and the premier of My Blueberry Nights (a Kar Wai Wong film starring Jude Law and Norah Jones and Natalie Portman and others). So i had to get all dressed up and walk the red carpet. Thank goodness for the SF designer Miranda Caroligne being so kind as to make me a dress for the adventure. It was walking remix! Totally purrrfect!

Following the premier, i got to go schmooze at dinner with a bunch of folks that i’m sure i’m supposed to know but am dreadful at recognizing. I’m currently back in my hotel giving my feet a rest before running off to a post-party party (sponsored by Louis Vuitton of all people). This whole thing is quite absurd. The glitz, the glam, the gawkers. I feel *way* out of place, but it’s a fascinating ethnographic adventure. Still, no one can believe that i don’t know who this that or the other person is. Doo dee doo.

More later… just thought folks (like my mom) would enjoy the pics!

dysfunctional product design: Apple MagSafe Airline Adapter

I bought a new Macbook and ordered the Apple MagSafe Airline Adapter with it since none of my other airline plugs would work. When i opened it, i was horrified to see that it was a two-part thing: the cord and the cigarette plug part. I knew this was going to be a disaster. Sure enough, FIRST flight, the damn cigarette part gets stuck in the power plug on the plane and i have to leave it behind. I grumble the whole way off the plane about dysfunctional design. Who thinks it wise to make such a thing two-part when the entire structure of a cigarette lighter is to get stuck? ::grumble::

So i call Apple. They don’t know what i’m talking about when i talk about the airline power adapter, let alone the two parts. (They of course don’t sell a replacement head on the website.) I send them to their own product page. They promise to send me a new one. I get a regular power adapter in the mail (not the airplane one). I call them back and we go through rounds and rounds. After 25 minutes, i have to hang up to go to a meeting. I call them back a third time and we had to start completely over. Once again, the guy doesn’t know what i’m talking about. On hold, talking to manager, on hold. Just another minute. 15 minutes go by. 45 minutes later i’m livid and he asks me to hold again and the guy tells me that’s not covered under my warantee and i want to bite his head off. I tell him that it’s a poorly designed product destined to fail. He tells me no one has ever had this problem before. I tell him to read the blogs and the frequent flyer bulletin boards where there’s lots of bitching. He tells me he can’t do anything for me but he will tell his manager about the blogs. I ask him if i can just order just the head of the damn thing and finally, he tells me that’s possible but not through the site and i’m like i don’t care, just send it.

I realize that i’m just whining but i need to vent (and isn’t that what blogs are for?). I live on airplanes. 20,000+ miles this month. I _need_ my power adapters to work or i go batty, stressed because i can’t get work done. And my least favorite part of this “modern” world is having to call tech support for anything. They increase the likelihood of me getting a blood clot or ulcer by a very large percentage. Plus, it gives me unbelievable amounts of pain to watch humans become robots taught to follow scripts infinitely. Tech support structures seem stricter than even the military. And i want to be nice to them because it seems like a sucky job, but boy do they get my blood boiling. Must go do yoga. In the meantime, i ordered an extra battery and an extra airline adapter, all the meanwhile feeling cranky about how their fuckup is making me by more product rather than less.

social network sites: public, private, or what?

Over at Knowledge Tree is a recent essay i wrote called Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? For many who follow this blog, the arguments are not new, but i suspect some folks might appreciate the consolidated and not-so-spastic version. At the very least, perhaps you’ll be humored to see my writing splattered with the letter ‘s’ instead of the letter ‘z’ (it’s an Australian e-journal). There’s also an MP3 of me reading the essay for those who fear text (which is very novel since y’all know how much i fear audio/video recordings of me, but i did resist trying to sound funny while pronouncing the letter s instead of the letter z). And here’s a PDF of the essay for those who wishing to kill trees.

In conjunction with this essay, there’s a life chat at 2PM Australian Eastern on 22 May. This translates to 9PM PST on 21 May and midnight New York time (which is where i’ll be so hopefully i won’t be too loopy, or at least no more loopy than i am feeling right now).

Enjoy!

5 secrets to success

I still hate memes, but i love Nancy. And i wasn’t going to do this because there’s nothing i hate more than talking about what has made me successful (mostly because i hate admitting that i’m successful). But i’ve also been spending a lot of time lately mulling over questions from undergraduates asking how they can be me and worrying about elder academics who tell me that i don’t deserve the attention that i get.

In some senses they’re right. There are people doing *amazing* work who get so little credit for it because it’s not chic. At the same time, i work my ass off and do so because i believe that i can make a difference in this world. I’ve always struggled with Audre Lorde’s statement that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” because i’m not so sure that dismissing the master’s tools dismantles the house either. In doing activist work, i started to believe that you need people at different levels – some inside the system and some out. At V-Day, we realized that celebrities could do wonders in making change happen. I decided long ago that the way that i could change the world was to be as public as possible and to make connections to people doing work at all levels (grassroots, policy, research, money). I believe that knowledge is power and i believe that teaching is the path to change. Regardless of my title, i see myself as a teacher. I’m trying to teach people about people who aren’t like them. I’m trying to teach people tolerance and information that they can use to make right by people with less privilege. In doing so, i inevitably piss off a lot of people who believe that i don’t deserve the access/privileges/connections/power that i have. What is most disheartening is how many of those pissed off people are fellow academics who feel the need to maintain some invisible hierarchy that i don’t understand. No matter how many times i’ve been proven wrong, in my heart, i want to believe that academia is fundamentally about knowledge production and dissemination. And i’d rather run around the world trying to help people than play the games that would make me a good academic.

Of course, i should note that this doesn’t always mean that i’m successful or that i don’t make mistakes. I still cringe when press attribute ideas to me that are most definitely not mine. (Impression management is Goffman, not me. I didn’t invent internet anthropology. Hell, i’m not even an anthropologist. Etc.) A lot of what i bring to the table involves learning from others and apophenia – making connections where none previously existed.

Given this, i’ll offer 5 “secrets” to my success (and try to stop ::cringing::)…

1. “Demo or die.” This was the mantra at the Media Lab and i absolutely detested the process of having to demo Lab work to every visitor who entered the building. It was exhausting and repetitive. Looking back, i can’t tell you how much this changed my world. Through the Lab, i learned to be able to present anything on the fly to any audience. I learned how to squeeze a 30 minute talk into 5 minutes and build on a 5 minute talk to fill an hour with useful information. I learned how to read what people knew and adjust what i was showing them to their interests and level of knowledge. Speaking and expressing ideas to a wide variety of audiences is so important. And it takes practice. A lot of practice. You can’t just hide in a library cubicle for years and then expect to give a stellar job talk. The reason that i speak so often is that i think that i need the practice. I want to learn to get my point across. Sometimes, i fail, but i keep trying.

(This also applies to writing. Be able to write to any audience. Learn to write an op-ed, a persuasive blog post, an academic article, anything and everything! I detest writing; that’s why i started blogging my ideas. Practice practice practice.)

2. “Learn the rules. And then learn how to break them.” I was a punk kid who refused to follow by anyone’s rules. I got kicked out of everywhere. I thought that this was radical. When i was in high school, my mother explained that one of her best skills was telling people to fuck off and go to hell in a ladylike way so that they didn’t even know how to respond. Over the years, i realized that there is immense power in understanding the rules and norms and tweaking them to meet your goals. Rejecting society is fun as a kid; figuring out how to circumnavigate barriers to entry is more fun as an adult. Do it with grace, kindness, and sincerity. (I fear that explicitly stating examples of this here might get me into trouble.)

3. “Diversify your life.” The term diversity is so loaded it’s painful, but i can’t think of a better word to explain what i want to explain. Get to know people from every walk of life. Read books from every discipline. Read different blogs. Attend conferences that address the same issue from a ton of different perspectives. And when you attend those conferences, spend 50% of the time with people you know well and 50% of the time with people that you barely know. One of the best decisions i made at SXSW this year was to not flit around but to hang out with one small group per night and really bond. I hate the concept of “social networking” because it seems so skeevy. The idea isn’t to build a big rolodex, but to build meaningful relationships that exist on multiple levels – professional, personal, etc. The more people and ideas you encounter, the more creative you’ll be able to be and the more that you’ll be able to contribute to a conversation on top of the things that you know deeply through your own work.

4. “Make mistakes. Publicly. With lots of witnesses. Apologize. And learn.” It’s easy to hide from mistakes and it’s natural to try to keep them under wraps. I think that there’s a lot of value to making mistakes publicly. First, that means that you’re willing to try new things out. Second, it means that you’re going to be forced to learn from those mistakes fast. My blog is filled with hypotheses that are wrong, ideas that are half-baked. I say stupid things. People call me on it and i’m learn from that. I get super frustrated when people are not willing to put things out there until they are just perfect. The fact is that once something is in public, it will be critiqued and challenged no matter how fully baked you think it is. This is true for software and it’s true for ideas. The bugs are found through interaction. I understand why academics love to control and perfect things before they go out there, but often, it’s too late. Don’t avoid the press – the stupid questions that they will ask will make you think more than any challenging question your advisor can punt your way. And yes, they will misquote you no matter how much you try. But then you get to read the blogs and see others critique your misquoted half-baked explanation and you can learn from it. It’s better to fumble in public than to stay in your house any day. The trick is to pick yourself up, try to correct any misunderstandings, and use it to learn.

5. “I’m insane. It’s not all fun and games. Success != happiness.” Folks assume that being successful is all wonderful, just like they imagine that being a celebrity would be ideal. It’s a Friday night. I’m writing this blog entry to take a break from an essay that’s overdue. I don’t take weekends. I barely date. I don’t have children. My business class seats are because i spend more time in airports than sleeping in my own bed. Getting out of bed is as hard as getting my cat into her car carrier. It looks good on Flickr because no matter how crap the day’s been, i know that i’m supposed to put on a smiley face when i write on this blog, send a Twitter, or get on stage. Every day, i wake to emails that are meant to make me feel guilty about not helping this that or the other person. For all that i do, i’m always told that it’s not enough. And the more public i become, the more people tear me to pieces. I become the target of people’s anger, like the poor father whose son committed suicide and blamed me. That shit hurts like hell.

I don’t regret what i do but it’s not all fun and games. But i glow for weeks when a mother comes up to me to thank me and tell me that she’ll stop being so hard on her daughter. If you want to change the world, if you want to be in the public eye, you have to be prepared for the costs that it will have on your personal life and sanity. I have to admit that every 6 months, i want to quit it all and go have a normal life with a 9-5 job and a significant other and a social life and a baby. But there’s something in me that won’t let me do that… Maybe i’m running from my self, but hopefully it’s just that i would prefer to live my life trying to make grandiose change than live a simple life. Of course, i strongly believe that the latter would make more “happy” but, somehow, happiness is not enough for me. I’m far too invested in succeeding to make the world right to find serenity. For better or worse.

i can see

I’ve had glasses for as long as i can remember. As a kid, i hated them and begged for contacts. I stubbornly wore contacts for years even though they were irritating and i always fell asleep with them in. I did so because my coke bottle glasses were embarassing. In college, contacts became impossible because i never slept and spent too much time staring at computer screens. Luckily, i found out that i could spend an obscene amount of money and get relatively thin and cool glasses across the street from the computer lab. While visiting San Francisco a few years later, i found the best eye glasses guy ever. At a store on the west side of Castro by 19th, there’s this gay guy (a proper bear who wore leather the first time i saw him). When i walked in, i told him i was looking for new glasses. He looked at me and then grabbed a pair and shoved them at me with, “here. these.” I asked if i could look around and he made it very clear that this was not the right question. He was right – the glasses were perfect; I bought them. A few years later i bought another pair from him. They too were perfect. But due to my prescription, they were over $900 each.

I first heard about Lasik when i was in high school and i begged and pleaded with my mom to get the surgery. When she was sick of hearing me beg, she got the eye doctor to explain that it was not a procedure for minors and that my eyes needed to stabilize. I thought about it again a few years later, but my lack of income made it an impossible endeavor. Besides, what if something went wrong?

Over the last few years, i’ve heard people ramble on and on about Lasik. I started to realize that most of my friends had had it done. And they loved it. My friend Case started sending me del.icio.us links of everything i needed to know. He raved about his doctor and told me to call him. I actually did call him, but then a set of personal problems made me not follow up. As i was leaving San Francisco, i thought about again but i just didn’t have the nerve to call.

Moving to Los Angeles made the desire to fix this problem grow ever more strong. Perhaps the ever-present plastic surgery ads played into it, but more than anything, it was living five blocks from the beach and hating my glasses whenever i went to the beach. To top it off, the film on my glasses started flaking in December, meaning that new glasses were going to be necessary very soon. I started asking people if they had any recommendations in LA. I figure that LA, land of all things plastic surgery, had to be an ideal place to get Lasik done. Very few people knew of any good surgeons here but one name did emerge – a Dr. Robert Maloney. He was considered to be the best – he fixed other doctors’ fuckups, did way too many famous people, and had done a bazillion of these things. He got to do all of the FDA trial stuff and that ABC show Extreme Makeover used him as the eye doctor. He was extremely expensive and located in Beverly Hills – terribly surface-level indicators but, honestly, i wanted someone who would be good given how bad my vision is.

Shortly before 6PM on Tuesday night, i decided to just call and see if i could get an appointment, just to see… The guy on the phone asked me which month. I said now? He said that he actually had a cancellation for tomorrow (Wednesday) at 2PM. I said perfect. I went down to the clinic. It’s poshy-poshy and no one working there has glasses. On the waiting table are these huge binders – Dr. Maloney’s CV. Harvard, Oxford, UCSF, award this award that, etc. I go through a bazillion tests. The first set are obvious – damn do i have bad vision. -10.0. That’s at the upper scale of what they are even willing to consider, but there are alternatives to Lasik. More tests. No glaucoma, no indications of macular degeneration, tear ducts work, average pupils, etc. Then, there’s the cornea thickness test – this is the one that really matters because they have to shave this off. Surprisingly, i have super thick cornea making it very easy to do the correction even with my atrocious vision. After going through all of the nurses and doctors (who are all amazingly nice and willing to humor all of my strange questions), i meet Maloney. It takes me two seconds to realize that he’s arrogant as hell (with Hollywood niceness coated on top). Perfect. I have to admit that i like arrogant doctors when it comes to this kind of stuff. He needs to be absolutely convinced that he couldn’t possibly mess it up. And he was. His success rate was astounding – there was no reason to think that i’d be the first person he’d leave blind after 40,000 of these damn things.

I decided to do it. Again, they asked me when i wanted the surgery. They typically have availability a week after consultations but i look at my calendar and realize that i have a million things scheduled next week and if anything went wrong, it wouldn’t be pretty. I asked her if there was anything tomorrow (Thursday). She looked at me startled and said she doubted it, but when she went to that date in the monitor, there was indeed one opening – 1.30PM, Thursday, February 1. I said i’d take it. They asked if i wanted the all laser version (Lasik Wavefront with Interlace) or the one that involved the blade (Lasik Wavefront only). I don’t think they put it that curtly but that’s what my head translated it to. I didn’t care that the all-laser option was an extra $800 – the idea of blades made my eyes try to jump out of my skull.

I left the office. And then i panicked. Did it make sense to do this so rash? It was a lot of money (or rather, a lot of credit card debt). Who would take me to the doctor’s? And then it dawned on me that Ronen was in San Deigo this week. Ronen, a dear old friend of mine, is somehow associated with all of my medical crises in my head because he’s picked me up and taken care of me far too many times. I called him and without asking, he asked if i needed company. And i wimpered, pleeeease. And he changed around his plans to find a rental car to come up and take me to the doctor’s and calm me down and spend all day with me.

I went into the doctor’s. They gave me three valium to calm my nerves. They did absolutely nothing but i pretended to be calmed. They put all sorts of drops in me. I laid back. Pressure – they put this thing on my eye so that it couldn’t move. Stare into the light (even when i couldn’t see the light). Laser round one – making the flap. Then the other eye got it’s flap opened. Eyes closed. Swivel to new machine. Weird tape to keep my eyes open. Stare into the light. Laser round two – reshaping the cornea. And then all of these weird brushes and a liquid and an air vacuum. Repeat on next eye. Keep eyes closed for a moment. Look up – see the clock? Holy shit.

Ronen drove me home with my eyes closed (while i was wearing these cool Burning Man-esque goggles). We cheated and stopped for B&J’s milkshakes. Took the ambien, slept for four hours. Woke up and could see, dropped meds in my eyes. Things were still quite blurry though. Had dinner, dropped more meds in my eyes. Listened to the Daily Show. Went to sleep, woke up and rolled over and could see my alarm clock. Holy shit. Drove myself back to the doctor’s for a check up (where they also fixed the itchy thing which turned out to be extra flap ness). Drove home, bought sunglasses.

The folks at the Maloney Vision Institute were unbelievably professional and reassuring (their routines during surgery were fascinating to listen to – amazingly precise). I was also a sucker for all of the little unnecessary but make you feel good things – they paid for parking, i got a little leather bag with all the meds pre-packaged and they gave me a prescript to go through Heathrow, there was coffee and tea (and valium and ambien). The clinic smelled good. They had soft fancy chairs. And the combination of down-to-earth nurses and doctors and an arrogant surgeon (who was still amazingly nice) really worked for me. Even though i was terrified, i was confident that this was the right place to be doing this.

Things are still slightly blurry, but not really that bad. My vision also seems to go in and out between 20/20 and 20/40. I’m told this should last for a little while, mostly because of the magnitude of the change. Stabilization should be in three months or so. The crazy red blobs on the side of my eyes should last two weeks. The dryness should go away (but it’s not actually that bad now). I’ll probably get some fun halos at night (again, due to the terribleness of my vision). But HOLY SHIT. I don’t have glasses anymore. ::jaw on floor::

absence

I just wanted to apologize for being absent for the past few weeks and apologize that i will continue to be absent for a bit. I’m in the height of intense data collection and my brain hurts.