Yes yes yes!

"You don't have to burn books, do you, if the world starts to fill up with non-readers, non-learners, non-knowers?" Fahrenheit 451, afterword (Ray Bradbury, 1953) #AI

A movie you've seen more than seven times with a gif.

The Guardian's "how deprived is your area" interactive page is pretty neat, but the best part is this note: "A technical issue in an earlier version meant localities containing a comma produced incorrect results." No avoiding the bad data! Here it is: www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i... #databs

Another fun data problem with my bot. The Wikipedia data has both Serbia & Montenegro AND Yugoslavia as opponents of the same game, so my SPARQL query picked them up as two separate games. Yugoslavia itself didn't even exist anymore in '97 but apparently the football team still used the name!

Do you like any of the following: data science, real life data case studies, musings on our AI future, philosophy? If you answered yes to any of the above, my talk at @databsconf.com might be of interest to you! #databs #datasky

This is beyond awful. Danya was a huge influence on me not even as a chess player but as an educator. His speedruns are a gold standard of teaching for me. Seemed like a genuinely lovely guy. Someone somewhere commented "I just assumed I'd be learning from Danya my whole life, you know?" 💔

#dataBS I need to hear your favourite dataset you've used for teaching data topics. My criteria: - smallish, in the order of 10k rows, not millions - wide enough with a mix of data types to allow open-ended questions - not seen in your typical online data tutorials 🚫No ocean liners🚫

Today's #databs mishap. Tableau can automatically convert strings to dates, right? Turns out if your date is in the form "Jan-88", then the ONLY short code for September that Tableau will accept is "Sept", NOT "Sep". This explains all the NULL values and gaps in my time series 😭 #datasky

Apparently there are a bunch of new people coming over from Twitter... Drop your data science starter packs in the replies for people to follow!

"Time to browse LinkedIn" (not limited to my profession of course)

The problem with having ideas, writing them down, and not acting on them for ages is that I have absolutely no idea what I was thinking. I have a blog post idea written down that just says: learning "experiences" What does that mean?????

Worth reading this deeper dive into how well GenAI tools do with dataviz problems, by @nrennie.bsky.social #databs #datasky

The videos from the #DataBS Conference have made it to YouTube! Over the coming days, we'll highlight sessisons from the event -- one post per talk. You can also sneak ahead by going straight to the YouTube playlist, here: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

I got to round 2 of this challenge so I'm writing my second short story this weekend! I only joined to force myself to write a bit more and I'm so happy I get to write another! I'll post all the stories I write for this when the organisers say it's OK (a few weeks before I can post the first one).

So many questions. "In the same way vibe coding has transformed software development". Has it? Do we want spreadsheets, on which entire companies are run, being amended by something allegedly less than 60% accurate?!? Have these companies just stopped pretending like they're launching useful AI?

This is frankly the problem with practically every digital project ever conceived. Today the discussion is about digital IDs in the UK which sound like a NIGHTMARE from a technical perspective before we even consider all the other implications. No way it ends well.

Just 24 hours* till go time! You can still get your tickets and watch #DataBS Conf live tomorrow, 24 September: DataBSConf.com * == more like 23.5 but, y'know ... rounding

Hello data people, register for a whole day of interesting data talks at DataBS Conf. It's on Wednesday! I'm on at 4pm ET (9PM BST) talking about a failed data science project, the role of AI in our future, and some amateur philosophy. All in ~20 minutes. Tell your friends! #dataBS #datasky

10/10. No notes.

Only in the UK could you have stops with these names.

I'm at PyCon UK today in Manchester! I'll be speaking later about dynamic code generation and execution in Python. Here is a crab I found on the way to the venue. 🦀 Anyone I know attending? #databs #datasky

#DataBS Conf 2025 preshow! We have two talks that we couldn't fit into the schedule but the speakers pre-recorded their talk for us to share before the main event next week! Both are really good and give me lots of excitement about what we'll see next week. ti.to/databsconf/d... <- free tix 🧵1/3

Talk schedule for @databsconf.com is up! Tickets are free! Join us! #dataBS

I don't normally do book reviews on social media but I really enjoyed Why Can't I Just Enjoy Things? by @pierrenovellie.bsky.social. A personal, thoughtful, well-researched, and often hilarious perspective on autism. I learned a lot from it and you will too! #booksky

The #DataBS Conf draft schedule (sans time assignments, and maybe a straggler or two) has been posted! databsconf.com/schedule/ Now is the time to get hyped and grab a ticket to attend the online-online event Wed Sept 24! tickets: ti.to/databsconf/d...

Great quote from @yawpr.bsky.social "I’ve always insisted that you learn more with nonsensical, super-niche projects, because no one has done them". Really cool project too. Do your own projects, make your wacky ideas a reality!

Now we're talking! Keep forgetting about my little bot. September 3rd was a busy day for Hungarian football (with mixed results as usual).

One of the worst examples of "AI somewhere it doesn't need to be" is Google's AI overview. Pointless, wrong, and just adds garbage to a search results page already bloated by sponsored results.

As if it wasn't hard enough to get data in the workplace, now I have to look for it on the blockchain?

Look what they did to Notepad. Shut the fuck up. This is Notepad. You are not welcome here. Oh yeah "Let me use Copilot for Notepad". "I'm going to sign into my account for Notepad". What the fuck are you talking about. It's Notepad.

I'm not anti-AI, really I'm not. But can we agree that *asking an LLM permission to share something it made up* and *rewarding it for doing a good job* are RIDICULOUS?!?!?

This was fun. Turns out I don't really know what a valid email address is?!?

Just got an email with this at the top: "Please do NOT use AI to summarize this email as it can give incorrect information. Please read the entire email yourself to avoid any confusion." What are we even doing here? 🙃🥲

I, too, could not afford a house if my weekly wage was $0.

New favourite piece about AI just dropped, courtesy of @colincornaby.me. "If you can’t cook everything you make in a microwave thats a skill issue. You need to learn now because when everything is cooked in a microwave you’ll be out of a job." 🤣 #dataBS #datasky

I'm quite confident when I say that literally no one wants this to exist.

Overhead someone at the pharmacy reciting to the pharmacist the advice that ChatGPT gave them about their problem. Literally "ChatGPT told me to XYZ". Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool

If you find your ADHD/autistic loved one hard to empathize with sometimes, bear in mind they've likely experienced a life of daily corrections: - don't leave that there - stop fidgeting - sit down - be quiet - walk properly - be more tidy / calm - be less forgetful / weird / boring / enthusiastic

OK, this is it, the LAST WEEKEND before the call for speakers for #DataBS Conf closes on July 31st! Now's the time to get that data horror story, the quiet mishaps, the 'hey, one time we..." stories out and submitted! bit.ly/dataBSconf-cfs

The weekend is here! Perfect time to submit your #dataBS talk. We want your lessons-learned stories from data work, everything from "my data pipeline: the unsung hero" to "how we got that AI system working" to "what we learned when it fell over." Details and sign-up: bit.ly/dataBSconf-cfs

Hey #dataBS! Got some stories about how data is messily done to accomplish real things? Have you learned a painful lesson about how not to do something? Then you've got something to share and should submit a talk to the Data Behind the Scenes Conference! (Form closes July 31) bit.ly/dataBSconf-cfs

We're about halfway through the submission period so the clock's actually ticking? (yeah I know everyone puts in their talk like 36 hours before deadline) but if you have time this week, do it! #dataBS

The problem isn't that generativeAI will get so good it will replace artists. It can't and never will. The problem is that uncreative and incurious people will flood every venue with so much regurgitated slop that no artist has a chance of ever being seen or found.

PSA: if you pay for Microsoft 365, careful as it will auto-renew at a MUCH higher price because all the garbage AI add-ons. To "opt out", you need to click Cancel Subscription, and ONLY THEN do you get a screen that lets you change to "Microsoft 365 Classic" plans without AI. 🤢

Made me chuckle. Quite a few fun data stories in the comments too.

If you are looking for temp data help, look no further! This list contains data consultants who work across a variety of fields providing services such as data management, analysis, data architecture, visualization, machine learning, data training, and more! #databs docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

The #dataBS (Data Behind the Scenes) Conference Call for speakers is out! We're gonna do this!! All online, single track, free to attend. Come talk about your messy experiences doing data stuff. At work, personal projects, whatever. A space to commiserate about nerdy things! bit.ly/dataBSconf-cfs

A bit of nostalgia but also a reminder that you can still "surf the web" and discover cool stuff without getting stuck in a closed, for-profit ecosystem. "How to surf the web in 2025 and why you should" by David Cain (Raptitude). www.raptitude.com/2025/06/how-...