This week's vibes.

To anyone who is on the job market in Statistics this academic year: the George Mason University (GMU) Department of Statistics is hiring for open-rank, tenure-track or tenured positions! For full consideration, apply by January 14 at this link: tinyurl.com/6mjs8fye

"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato." surreal times dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...

We can’t even get folks to mask.

Biostatistics is accepting submissions for a special collection on Statistical Foundations of AI and Real-World Evidence. We plan to highlight rigorous statistical work on development, evaluation, and deployment of AI/ML for real-world health data. If you work in this area, consider submitting!

Modern Times - 1936

My dept has an open assistant professor position (DL 2nd Feb). Although the call indicates special interest in datacenter-scale computing systems research, any research area is applicable and this would be a great place also for someone doing Bayesian flavored research www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...

Movie theaters not having intermissions in this country was one of my early culture shocks.

One of the most lopsided results you'll ever see in a poll, from our weekend Washington Post poll www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

A question for those who teach in #highered. What is your institution's late registration policy. We are on a 10 week instruction plus 1 week final schedule and students can register 2 weeks late. They try to catch up with 20% of instruction basically. Is this the norm or approximately?

Today I realized that I am now the older relative who makes comments on every young person’s social media posts in the family 😱

If you are a resident of California, the state now has a portal where you can demand deletion of your personal data from 500+ registered data brokers with a single request form, for free. consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov

Now that I have finished my last book of the year I can share my year in books.

Many of my friends’ activity (and mine too) on goodreads show that we are finishing one last book before the year ends.

Entering 2026 in UTC -8 timezone means we are still in 2025 for about a little over five hours. Happy new year to you all 🎈

Finally got to buy my friend’s book. Looking forward to reading it.

▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░ 98.90%

Lawyer Sues The IRS, Demanding It Recognize Pets As Legal Dependents

Lucky day! Wordle 1,638 2/6 ⬛🟩🟩⬛🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

All the material for my Bayesian Data Analysis course is available online, including the lectures, which we re-recorded this fall (some of them by @aloctavodia.bsky.social and Noa Kallioinen while I was on vacation). The video links are listed in the schedule at avehtari.github.io/BDA_course_A...

My college had a tradition called primal scream. The night before the final exams at 9 pm everyone went out on the streets for a very loud scream. I now realize that the faculty need this tradition too. AHHHHHHHHHHHH

One of my favorite words to talk about. In Turkish we call the bird hindi and India is called Hindistan. In Persian the bird is called būqalamūn. In Turkish bukalemun is chameleon.

I love finding random and unexpected vinyls. At the back it says “The music heard here, recorded in Anzahar, Olukman, and Tülünk villages in the province of Sivas in south-eastern Turkey...” 1972 USA release

You know how the news is weird lately. I see your nonsense and raise you this: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/u...

Don't let AI do your homework, Pope Leo tells US youth reut.rs/48tKTYY

Reporter: Are you affirming that you think the president is a fascist? Mamdani: I've spoken about -- Trump: Just say yes, it's easier than explaining.

It’s still raining in LA and now I remember the reason why there is light on top of the stove.

📣TOMORROW @ 4PM 📣 UC Academic Student Employees and UAW-represented research and advising staff are rallying at every campus to demand a fair contract. Join us – our rights and our future are on the line.

I just heard about the KYUK radio station on the Code Switch podcast. If you can, show a sign of solidarity by donating to support the first Native American radio station. www.kyuk.org

I am glad that these days fewer job applications in academia require recommendation letters in the first round of reviews. It saves us, letter writers, a lot of time. It obviously saves letter readers a lot of time too. I hope it becomes the norm in the near future.

Since my London days, I had completely forgotten about the need to turn the lights on during the day. It has been raining nonstop for the last three days in Los Angeles and I am once again reminded about this 💡🛋️🪔

The Trump administration demanded UCLA pay $1.2 billion to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. n.pr/4hYa0pY

It is a beautiful rainy day in LA.

If you have tenure at Texas A&M and aren't maliciously emailing the president a dozen times every day to ask if you can say this or you can say that, then what's the point in having tenure?

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer. He is a computer safety researcher. And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine. In under 1600 words. aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

Today I paid for a time machine to take me to my teen years 🥹

Lucky day Wordle 1,602 2/6 ⬛🟨⬛🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Know an early-career statistician who shows potential for great leadership and shaping the future of statistics? COPSS is accepting nominations for the Emerging Leader Award: stattrak.amstat.org/...

Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp.... genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.

Tbh I'm not even mad about 'On Your Marx, get set, Zo!'

😬

@aoc.bsky.social says of Mamdani victory: "A lot of people...are willing to talk about party unity when it serves them, but not party unity when it serves everybody." "We have a future to fight for, and we're either going to do that together or you're going to be left behind."

What is the German word for the feeling you get after closing GitHub issue #1 of a repo that has 100+ issues?

Coco deserved more than an airplane screen. Thank you @vidiots.bsky.social for showing it on the big screen!

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.

I have lived in many places and have experienced many different traditions. The most meaningful for me has definitely been The Day of The Day. Thank you LA for bringing this tradition to our lives. Thinking of my mother, aunt, grandparents - today and always. Siempre en mi corazón 🫀

I know I am late to watching The Big Bang Theory but if anybody had told me that Sheldon Cooper is a Bayesian I might have done it sooner.

Please support our trans siblings in Jamaica. #HurricaneMelissa

Mamdani lied when he said he wrote right_join(y, x) in dplyr when he actually wrote left_join(x, y). Or perhaps he did the joins in SQL and he lied about that too.