The limits of affection in a hateful world — My younger brother texted me this past weekend and asked if we could talk. We’re both adults with families of our own living thousands of miles apart and although we used to be close, we’ve gradually drifted apart over time, distance, and the minutiae of adult life. …

Counting a Vanishingly Small Population — The transgender community has experienced a rise in cultural visibility in recent decades. While some of this attention is welcome, even necessary, to gain full acceptance into mainstream society, it has also brought resistance in certain quarters. Although 62% of Americans in 2019 reported being more supportive of transgender rights…

Are You Too Queer for this Club? — In 1950, communist and labor organizer Harry Hay, along with a small group of friends, formed one of the first gay rights organizations in the United States. This organization, which would come to be known as the Mattachine Society (a reference to a group of medieval French maskers), grew to…

I am both a data scientist and a transgender woman. The two of course are completely unrelated and I only mention them together because I used the principles of one to help me deal with the messy realities of the other. …

It feels good to be yourself — The simple genius of Theresa Thorn’s 2019 book It Feels Good To Be Yourself lies in the fact that it presents trans and non-binary youth as completely normalized and healthy members of society, which of course they are. This delightful and uplifting children’s book — geared to kids in the…

How a racist oversight led to one of the most amazing looks at Black life ever created — In 1893, the “World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition” was held in Chicago to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World. It was intended to showcase the technological prowess and financial might of the United States of America. Several cities across the country engaged in an intense…

Exploding the Myth that Black Lives Matter Protests are the Cause of America’s Surge in COVID Cases — We’re in the midst of a resurgence in cases of COVID-19. Since mid-June, infections have surged to more than 50,000 new cases daily according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. …

A look at the economic underpinnings of the Black Lives Matter movement using Seaborn, matplotlib, and the bar_chart_race animation — In this post, I will take data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and evaluate it using the Seaborn, matplotlib, and bar_chart_race packages. This post is a companion piece to the article 5 Graphs that Help Explain Black Lives Matter and is intended to be a code walk-through of how…

On June 1, 2020, author and activist Kimberly Jones posted a now-viral speech about Black Lives Matter titled “How Can We Win” in which she brilliantly breaks down the economic conditions which have led to Black Lives Matter protests. In this speech, she likens the economic history of America to…