The incredibly graphics team at The Athletic released this beautiful World Cup Forecast and interactive bracket www.nytimes.com/athletic/int... I dusted off my byline to write up an explainer for the model that's powering the projections, check it out! www.nytimes.com/athletic/734... (no paywall)

2026 FIFA World Cup: Each team’s chances of reaching the Round of 32

nytimes.com

How is Leon Thomas III up for Best New Artist at the Grammy's when he dropped this banger two decades ago... www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDs7...

The Backyardigans - Sinbad the Sailor [Reprise/Extended Version] (ft. Leon Thomas III & Sean Curley)

YouTube video by Jose Lang

youtube.com

The AI bot at the Bad Place posting blatantly false Trending topics

Been getting a lot of people asking about LA geography concerned that the images they see means the entire county is on fire. That's understandable. But LA is a big place. So, to give an idea of scale it's time to cart this out again. It's a map of LA with other cities superimposed on it.

One of the biggest tips I have for anyone doing data analysis, especially data from people, is to spend some time drilling down to the most granular data and just looking at individual records. You will find the craziest shit you never imagined and your analysis will be better for it #databs

🚨urban economics research siren🚨 This new paper analyses the effects of upzoning in Auckland by first specifying and second estimating an urban economic model. The results imply upzoning led to: - a 24% increase in floorspace; and - a 15 to 27% fall in house prices. Paper here: t.co/VhlUfIgsTD

Throughout my career I’ve collected a nice set of Strong Opinions about relatively unimportant things. Here’s one: Don’t end your talk with a slide that just says “Thanks!” or “Questions?” The slide that remains up during audience questions should be a summary of your main points

All western US water issues are entirely caused by the cultivation of cash crops in places that they shouldn't be grown. Everything, literally everything else, is a rounding error

rev. howard arson@theophite.bsky.social · 2y ago

if one more person says that AI uses up fresh water i am going to have a fucking stroke

Me opening my Spotify wrapped and relistening to my most-played tracks this year: Wow, I have great taste.

Spotify Wrapped day is my fav holiday of the year. Beyoncé was a surprise (thought Janelle Monáe was a lock), apparently two weeks straight of Cowboy Carter was too much to overcome, but otherwise this is a great look at my music tastes lately. Would love to see yours!

It's been interesting to witness in real-time how the usage of "algorithm" in many places has shifted from a neutral "sequence of instructions" to a negative "controlled ordering and boosting of information".

👇 sports are a microcosm of the broader issue that so much of the way we think about things is what and how we’ve chosen to count and record things

AJ@xndrew.bsky.social · 2y ago

“Made-up” almost always feels like short hand for “this challenges the fundamental truths I’ve constructed to make sense of a senseless world, and now I’m mad at you.”

four #videogame titles to get to know me

Tan@tanho.ca · 2y ago

four #videogame titles to get to know me

Wicked 2 was the most fun I’ve had in a theater all year, I was worried about the length and yet I would have stayed watched it again immediately. If you were on the fence about seeing it, I can’t recommend it enough!

One of the worst effects of car dependant city design isn't that there are a lots of cars, it's the valuable urban land given up to thick roads and parking... in order to make a city accessible to cars, it has to basically stop being a city.

PSA: Are your Bluesky notifications a tad too loud? You can set Bluesky to only replies and quotes. Go to the Notifications tab (web or mobile) and click on the ⚙️ in the top right. Note: This option is not found under Settings

"does bluesky have drafts" no but we have kindness. we have friendship. we know love. we know how to see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower. we know how to hold infinity in the palm of my hand, and eternity in an hour.

Oann, Fox News, Newsmax, Brietbart, twitter, Sinclair, AM radio etc all exclusively exist to distract the plebs with fights over immigrants and the gayness of m&ms while oligarchs sell the country for scrap off the back loading dock and it's been a multi-decade project that's in no way subtle

incidentally, this is my favorite genre of LLM work: step 1) be a domain expert in some area, 2) painstakingly label a small amount of data in your domain, 3) see how small an LLM you can get to replicate your work relatively reliably (use a frontier model + you to check quality) ==> Big Clean Data