This #rstats blog post is taking me *a lot* longer to write than expected, but for good reasons. I've wanted to explore this stuff for a while and it's fun to dig into academic arguments about this stuff.
Giles
@gdeejay.bsky.social
Applied economist working in international development policy 🇹🇴🇸🇧🇻🇺🇫🇯🇦🇺🇲🇲 (etc), Mostly memes. Sometimes post about #publicpolicy, research, data science, #PFM and #Rstats Economist | Independent Consultant All views my own
Just realized I've been listening to the Rocky Horror Picture Show album on repeat for the entire day. 🧐
I'm not sure if it's just because I'm asking different questions, but Claude has felt a little more challenging to work with lately, but in a *good* way. For instance, for this current analysis it's challenging me quite a bit on the methodology side of thing, which has really helped my thinking. 🤔
There have been reports that members of the Red Cross have been allowed to visit #Myanmar 's Aung San Suu Kyi who hasn't been heard from in 2.5 years. 📎 www.bbc.com/news/article...
I discovered there's a type of Quail with a thing on their head called a 'plume' and now I've got to update my vision board to include a hundred of these guys.
#Econsky More great work from the @grattaninstitute.bsky.social
Matthew Bowes@mbowes.bsky.social · 5d agoBetter economic insights make for better housing policy. This was a big part of the case for land use planning reform we made in our recent housing research at Grattan. That’s why it was great to see NSW commit this week to feasible capacity targets for local council plans. 🧵
I bought somebody a coffee to say thanks for maintaining a #rstats package that I love and they appear to have built me a custom function. You didn't need to do this! The coffee was to say thanks for all the amazing work you've already done! 🙏🏼 (😂)
Holy hell. Today, with the help of Claude, I've managed to put together a solid draft of this next blog that explores something I've had on my mind for a while. Claude also gave me a good condescending refresher on statistical techniques I haven't used in years. Very cool. 😎
Hey #rstats: Is there a way in Positron to view variables outside the Global Environment? In Rstudio I'll frequently change the focus environment in the environment pane to explore the contents of loaded packages, but I can't figure out how to do that in Positron. 🤔 @ivelasq3.bsky.social ?
This was actually a really great day. ReadyTech has a pretty impressive agent orchestration system and I met plenty of interesting people throughout the day.
Giles@gdeejay.bsky.social · 6d agoDigesting more cool #AI stuff today at Ready Tech's 2026 summit. 😎
I was scrolling through AliExpress for some reason and came across this brilliant cushion cover:
Doing God's work by drinking six cups of coffee and giving myself mild anxiety. 2/10. Would not recommend.
Back in Positron for my #rstats thanks to the inspiration from the crew at @rladiesmelb.bsky.social 🧐
R-Ladies Melbourne@rladiesmelb.bsky.social · 3w ago📢 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻: 𝗔 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗧𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘀 📅 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: 30th July, 2026 ⏰ 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲: 11 AM 📍 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲: Online - www.meetup.com/rladies-melb... Join @libbyheeren.bsky.social and Isabella Velásquez to explore the next generation of data science development in a relaxed, beginner-friendly environment!
Ordered a new drink bottle online for the gym but received what appears to be a swimming pool.
So, it seems I'm not just imagining that #bluesky is getting quieter: 🤔
Atlas - Engagement-Based Social Graph for Bluesky by Jaz (jaz.bsky.social)
bsky.jazco.dev
Sometimes I find an #rstats package that makes me feel seen as the author has faced the same pain as I have. Today's example of this is the countryatlas package which includes a collection of useful functions for working with cross-country data (like country_meta). Thank you, Youzhi Yu. 🫡
countryatlas: Join World Bank Data, Country Codes and Maps on the ISO Spine
A complete toolkit for getting country data onto honest maps. Country names rarely line up across data sources ("US", "U.S.", "United States", "United States of America" are one country, but a naive j...
cran.r-project.org
Two super interesting pre-prints testing #AI accuracy / output quality: 1.) arxiv.org/abs/2607.23424 Which indicates model accuracy can be penalized substantially for irrelevant/ misleading context. ...
Wrong and More Confident: A Field Experiment on Language Models Taking a Graduate Economics Exam
A red herring, an irrelevant passage added to a problem, makes a language model reason incorrectly and answer incorrectly far more often. Yet the model still writes out a full explanation, and the ans...
arxiv.org
Sharing this video from "Canva Create" because someone looked confused when I mentioned the Canva rap today. Tbh I kind of love this as it's so cringy and well executed. 😂
This is going to sound really naive, but I'm surprised how few courses are available on ATSI history, culture and spirituality. (I was exposed to snippets of it while in the NT which has made me want to learn more.) Guess I'll just have to pick up a book like some type of savage. 😤
I spent a good part of today responding to an email asking me if it's still worth learning to code in the age of AI. I answered yes, but this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately so it resulted in going down quite a few rabbit holes. 🧐
I just noticed that Gemini #AI features have been added to google TV and I'm really not sure why this got past the exploratory committee. The features: -View a set of pre-generated slides on a random set of topics -Create a horrible looking AI image for some reason -Ask Gemini about TV shows 🤨
Back at it after what Australians would call a cold and long winter:
Giles@gdeejay.bsky.social · 3mo agoHappy beach day (Which is everyday)
This was a really fun episode from Stuff You Should Know: The First Road Trip podcastaddict.com/stuff-you-sh...
Day 16 of the #NorthernTerritory: (First Nations art exhibition at the Dawin Museum / Art gallery) This is "Ngarndu Ngurra (My Country" by Allery Sandy
Giles@gdeejay.bsky.social · 2w agoDay 15 of the #NorthernTerritory: (Yet another waterfall...)
