Yes, I did buy a book solely based on its title.

Best feature of the new iOS: call hold assist. Hold assist holds the call for you so that you don’t have to wait listening to annoying waiting music endlessly.

This is a supreme example of mutual aid among academics. Faculty First Responders monitors the media of the anti-intellectual far right to notice when fellow scholars are being targeted, and offers practical support and guidance. facultyfirstresponders.com

Approximately three-quarters of all homicide victims in America are killed by someone they know. But the real threat from strangers is quite different from what most fear: one-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police. hrdag.org/violence-in-...

New academic year reverse bingo game: attend a meeting where budget is not mentioned.

Today I learnt the name of the Turkish football team Galatasary translates to 'Palace of the Celts', after the Celtic people who settled in Anatolia.

School starts on Thursday and not a single student emailed me asking for the syllabus in advance. I am worried about their well being!

If you want to read more books, put your phone in another room.

Buying a hummingbird feeder was definitely the best purchase of the summer. Why didn’t we do this earlier?!

truly insane how MAGA think that reading a single queer novel will trans their kids, but that actively training those same kids to worship guns from childhood runs no risk of violence, such that, when their kids DO become murderers, their first thought is "the transgenders must've caused this."

Many years ago when I bought my first car, I only had one CD in it: Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. We listened to the CD billion times. Years later we moved to LA and found Dudamel as the conductor of LA Phil. It is his final season in LA. He sure will be missed!

I am shocked that the @kanopy.com podcast episode on sports movies doesn’t mention Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman. One of the best of all times 🏈♥️

I am up for merit review. I have to list all of my accomplishments for the last two years. I am really tempted to list filling out the merit review forms as an accomplishment.

NEW: We got access to Jeffrey Epstein’s personal Yahoo inbox — more than 18,000 emails. It shows Epstein’s world in his own words: an unfiltered look at how his operation worked, who enabled it, and how Ghislaine Maxwell stayed at the center of it all.

Hello everyone! Do you have any resources to share on machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence for Latino students in the United States? Conferences, career books, YouTube channels, etc. 👇🏼

¡Hola a todos! ¿Tienen recursos para compartir sobre aprendizaje automático, ciencia de datos e inteligencia artificial para estudiantes latinos en Estados Unidos? Conferencias, libros sobre carreras, canales de YouTube, etc. 👇🏼

Don't miss UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program if you are looking for postdoc opportunities: ppfp.ucop.edu/info/how-to-...

I will reveal some secrets during this webinar. Come join us if interested in statistics education research. #statsed

I am so glad I got a booster in the summer. Currently I can’t get an appointment in LA!!!

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo as (half) depicted by Mohsen on this lovely Monday morning.

My cartoon for the @theguardian.com books autumn reads special.

Send a formal notice: If your books are in the LibGen dataset, send a letter to Meta and other AI companies stating they do not have the right to use your books. Here is a template you can use. actionnetwork.org/letters/auth...

I can’t believe medicine hasn’t come up with a better way to do mammograms. That is some primitive shit right there.

Timeline cleanse

The era in which folks did monthly introductions on BlueSky seems to be over.

My Bayesian Data Analysis course at Aalto is starting in 20mins. There are now 375 registered students, but as the course is not compulsory for most, I expect about 230 students to finish it. All the course material is available online at avehtari.github.io/BDA_course_A...

California lawmakers reach an agreement with Uber and Lyft that will open the door for app-based drivers to form unions. This is a victory for organized labor that could lay the groundwork for similar efforts in other states.

I have 5 tenure files to review and am here for a little rant. I really hate tenure review committees / department chairs asking me if the person would have been tenured at my institution. What a wrong question! Have you given them the same start up resources, teaching load, and other support?

On the left: Nate Cavanagh, a 28-year-old DOGE staffer and college dropout. On the right: Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old exiled Afghan scholar. This is the story of how DOGE targeted Halimi on social media. Then the Taliban took his family. 🧵

We're hiring in Operations Research. Join us. Tell a friend.

“University of California scientists helped create the Internet, wet suits, artificial intelligence and a lung therapy that has saved an untold number of premature newborns.” www.latimes.com/california/n...

🚀 New preprint! “Understanding Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Data Science Instructors: An Inaugural Framework” 📔 arxiv.org/abs/2508.14009 #datascienceeducation #datascience #highered

I came to the States in Aug 2005 for my bachelor’s. One of my first classes was a stats class. The prof asked us to ask our classmates how many states they visited & make a visualization of the distribution. Everyone was shocked to hear I’d only been to MA. “I just arrived last week” I kept saying.

In some Slack group I asked a #QuartoPub question that I could not figure out for half an hour. Damie solved it very nicely. I don't know them but their skill in solving the question and willingness to help a random person makes me think that they would be an asset to any #rstats team.

I recently learned that our statistics book (bayesrulesbook.com) cannot be listed on syllabi in Florida.

“We’re here to talk about A levels” “Free Palestine the BBC is complicit” 💀💀

The best bookstore in LA is truly The Iliad.

Reminder that all three books I've co-authored are freely available online for non-commercial use (and the fourth will be, too)

For folks at #JSM and beyond isi-web.org/statement/st... #JSM2025 #JSM25

For almost four months, we've been holding NIH vigils every Saturday at 10 am to come together as a community, support each other, and talk about what's been happening at the NIH. We will keep going as long as the NIH is under attack. Come join us to support NIH workers! @nihvigils.bsky.social

For LA folks who might like a painting show. My partner has a few pieces (3?) in this group show and we will be at the opening on Aug 16 at 6 pm. Feel free to say hi if you happen to be at the opening and like that sort of interaction. www.kohngallery.com/exhibitions-2

‘We are dying slowly, save us’: starvation takes hold in Gaza after a week of appalling milestones

There is nothing that made me feel more mid-career than my own students becoming professors. It is a really different feeling.

Wordle 1,502 6/6 🟩⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩⬛🟨🟨⬛ 🟩🟩🟨⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

A Tsunami Advisory is in effect for the L.A. region after an 8.7 magnitude earthquake was detected near Russia. I’ve been briefed and my team is in touch with coastal leaders and the Port of Los Angeles about overnight preparations. Sign up for emergency alerts: NotifyLA.org.

"Expected value" is one of the few statistical terms that is appropriately named.

Save the date (June 15-18, 2026) for the Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics, call for proposals to follow this fall www.causeweb.org/cause/ecots/...

Life is a catwalk.

I just finished listening to Season 3 of In the Dark podcast. It is dark and disturbing. If you have the mental energy, I’d highly recommend listening to it as it is important.