Welcome to Jordan’s Personal Website

Saluton! Bonvenon al mia persona retejo! Welcome to my personal website!

Hello my name is Jordan Hardee. I am a 24 year old IT student who goes to the University of Cincinnati. I’m interested in a lot of different things.

I have written previously for 2600: The Hacker Quarterly under various pseudonyms and have anonymously contributed to a number of free software and peer-to-peer projects. I am currently doing research for a book I am writing on Albanian history in the 20th century. In my free time I also occasionally help install political notes on Richard Stallman’s personal website. I am also run and am the founder of the Mason Church Club (MCC). I am much more moderate in my political views now, but I used to be the Press Secretary of the Ohio Green Party and the General Secretary of the Warren County Green Party. I am an associate member of the Free Software Foundation, a member of Esperanto-USA, and The Planetary Society.

Right now I’m trying to read all the major religious texts of the world and to get an understanding for the teachings and practices of all the major world religions (and some lesser known ones). I am planning on doing future programming related to brain-computer interfaces once I can afford the hardware. I am cautiously optimistic as to what the future holds. I try to be a good person as best as I can, and my faith in God has helped tremendously in that. I’m a bit of a polymath and tend to get obsessed with certain topics.

Upcoming Book

I am currently doing research for my upcoming book on the history of cold-war Albania with a focus on human rights and religious freedom. I gave a talk on this subject in 2018 at the University of Cincinnati’s Mediated Minds conference. My book tries to finish what Chris Moorey started in his impressive documentation of the religious persecution Orthodox Christian Albanians faced in his book God Among The Bunkers but with a focus on broader Albanian society and not merely on the experiences of Orthodox Christians.

This book aims to place this period of Albanian history within the greater context of cold war politics and Albanian history, and in so doing acts as a political treatise that attempts to explain the 20th century phenomenon of Marxism-Leninism by going back to the roots of contemporary enlightenment political philosophy. It aims to adequately cover the broad social, economic and political background of Albania’s distinct brand of Marxism-Leninism, how the official ideology functioned in practice, and the experienced reality of Hoxha’s rule on the ground by ordinary people. I plan on traveling to Albania in the Summer of 2023 or 2024 to actually finish writing the book.

Mason Church Club

I also run the Mason Church Club (MCC); an ecumenical, informal “church hopping” club I founded that aims to “Take Back Sundays” by helping people find a church to join. We visit a random local church in or around Mason, OH every other Sunday! You can learn more on its Facebook page: fb.me/MasonChurchClub

Esperanto

Part of my website might be in Esperanto! Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world. Esperanto means “the one who hopes”. This “hope” is the utopian aspiration of its founder, that all humankind will one day speak Esperanto as a second language, and that this destruction of the language barrier would be a driving force towards the realization of true universal brotherhood, international friendship, and eventually world peace. Utopian (and arguably unrealistic) as it is, it is still a fun language to learn and one that can connect you with a diverse range of people all over the world! The internet has led to a renewed interest in the language in recent years, and millions of people are taking up the challenge of learning this beautiful and elegant language which is designed to be as easy to learn as possible.

Regardless of its ambitiously utopian origins, the language itself is both politically and culturally neutral. It is a door to genuine international friendship. I can speak Esperanto with someone from another country on equal footing without the disadvantage of them having to speak my native tongue nor I having to speak theirs. There is no political or historical baggage with Esperanto as is with the case of English, Spanish, French, Russian, or Mandarin. For many it is the first stepping stone on the path of becoming truly multi-lingual. It is said that one who takes a year of Esperanto and a year of Mandarin has a better grasp on the Mandarin language than one who takes only two years of Mandarin.

Anyone with an internet connection can sign up to learn Esperanto today with Lernu! and Duolingo. I highly recommend trying it.

The Free Software Movement

A program is free software if the program’s users have the four essential freedoms:

1. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.