The Problem: Man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree. What’s at Stake: Transportation/conveyance of Death into the world—and all our woe. The Smoking Gun: Divine promises made; Divine promises kept? How cross-references suggest a way out The Clutch Moment: John 3:16

One of several funny things about this is that the TV version is of course a much better-looking statue, because the people behind have talent and taste, which makes it hard for them to make something authentically tasteless even when they’re making a pretty ham-fisted show.

What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

When you think about it, JFK really died of Addison’s Disease.

Because both the British and the Americans think the Brits are much better at being ionic

Meanwhile, despite superficially seeming to be the Emperor of Lists, Kant is Mysticism.

Odysseus: Kermit Penelope: Piggy Telemachus: Scooter Athena: Prairie Dawn Poseidon: Gonzo Circe: Abby Cadabby Calypso: Janice Polyphemus: Animal Hermes: Beaker Eumeaus: Beauregard Antinous: Timothée Chalamet Eurymachus: Pepe the King Prawn Eurycleia: Fozzie Argos: Rowlf

The only plausible accents for a film adaptation of the Odyssey are of course Irish ones.

“reached out … to get price quotes and delivery times for the gear necessary to make semiconductors” When I was a small boy thinking about building a nuclear reactor in my back garden, I too ran into problems at the “price quotes and delivery times for the gear necessary” stage of the project.

This week’s New Yorker features a report on the latest hip location in the East Village; inside is a little present prepared especially for Irish people at home and abroad.

Subway lines in Manhattan occasionally punch through some quite deep rock sections, e.g. north of 168th, but in Brooklyn and Queens they prefer to avoid or sneak through gaps in the Harbor Hill Moraine, the big pile of dirt dumped on Long Island by retreating glaciers about 15,000 years ago.

I just tell my LLMs to only say true and profound things that no-one knows yet. Works great.

Another year, another last minute “Do I have a clean jacket and a shirt with a collar?” crisis for me and the stupid Met Gala

This week on What's New in R: ✅ An introduction to Posit AI for RStudio ✅ 2nd edition of @kjhealy.co’s Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction book ✅ Quarto extension built by @ellakaye.co.uk for displaying times in readers’ local time zones. Read the issue: buff.ly/3I1H2dz #rstats

Perry (1979) “The Problem of the Essential Indexical”

Most of Yoda’s advice is late-night-dorm-room-level bollocks, especially “Do or do not; there is no Try”.

Ten years in the flour jar vs Ten years in the sugar jar.

Dammit I just missed a nice shot of the Statue of Liberty framed in the darkened rear gate of the ferry. I lift my lamp beside the golden door, you ignorant mfers.

I’m at the Staten Island Ferry. I’m at the Soylent Orange Processing Facility. I’m at the combined Staten Island Ferry and Soylent Orange Processing Facility.

Two kinds of Subway Snow Day. kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

What can one say, really.

NGL, I am a bit disappointed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Weekend

UNC, NC State, Duke

Here we go again.

I am unspeakably angry about this turnout gap figure, and it gives insight into the whole ballgame for gutting the VRA. Alito points out that Black turnout exceeded White turnout twice in 5 elections. The argument is garbage 1/x

The unmitigated perverse gall of deciding that the one kind of gerrymandering that has a clear constitutional pedigree— the VRA being clearly authorized by 15(2)— is the *one kind* that the US Supreme Court thinks the judiciary has the authority to *reject.*

Once again in danger of snapping, grabbing someone who wants to gut some great Midwestern flagship, or public universities generally, and shaking them till their teeth fall out while shouting “WHY DO YOU THINK ANYONE OUTSIDE THIS COUNTRY HAS HEARD OF YOUR STATE”

This is such a good book.

Truly outstanding work here so it is.

Chuck, now’s finally the right time to deploy the phrase “Monstrous Carbuncle”.

They should have a little mascot for this and it should be named the FAL HAL

Playing around with Rocker images more seriously than I have before (for the purpose of containing various robots). It’s great. rocker-project.org/images/

Back in the Golden Age of Blogging we were all supposed to take Barnett very seriously as a real intellectual force on the libertarian right. (As a side note, you could write a sober little essay about what Barnett thinks he is very cleverly trying to do here, and the contrasts it expresses.)

IT’S OVER, ANAKIN, I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND

“No place for violence in a Democracy” say people you may remember recently encouraging drivers to run over protestors for being in the way

Well, I was gonna ask you boys if you’d be interested in purchasing a little item I’ve got here.

There are lots of ways to look at Sawe’s astonishing 1:59:30 time. One I like: it’s a ~17sec/100M split for the whole race. Bolt’s 100M WR is 9.58, which is “not even” twice as fast, even though a marathon is >400x longer. The human performance range on this dimension is surprisingly compressed!

1:59:30. Good Lord.

My White House Correspondents Dinner With Andre

Everyone around the world will never forget where they were when they heard our dinner program would resume momentarily

“The program will resume momentarily, the press association’s president announced.” Like when Dad says he doesn’t care if it’s pouring rain and there’s an oil slick at the beach, we’ve driven all the way here and by God we are going to go swimming

Well that escalated quickly

There’s no way to subversively, ironically, or in some other at-arms-length way to attend the WHC Dinner.

Space is big. Really big. You won’t believe just how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is.

Or, you know, choose to focus on coming up with some sort of scheme to stop children in your own state falling victim to measles outbreaks, you weirdo.