“Hype is eating the future, and leaving us the bones.” Sun-ha Hong of UNC-Chapel Hill says the Silicon Valley hype machine systematically “borrows credibility from the future to purchase legitimacy in the present.” The cost, he argues, is a planetary-scale drain on our alternatives.

Tech Hype is Cannibalizing the Future

Every day, we are told that we live in the future—but hype is eating the future and leaving us the bones," writes Sun-ha Hong.

techpolicy.press

This is one of my favorite statistical facts, which I never see referenced:

For no real reason, I was looking up something about the ancestry of causal DAGs in path diagrams and came across this picture. I got to see it so you do to. HT to Sewall Wright who both set the course for a very useful analytical tool but also took the time to include cute drawings of guinea pigs

It’s a new @adambonica.bsky.social joint! data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-bulwar...

The Bulwark Killed an Investigation into Political Fundraising Spam After Its Publisher Took the Consultants’ Side

This is a story about the Democratic Party captured by its consultants, and about what happens when the pro-democracy press is asked to say so.

data4democracy.substack.com

Bayesian Workflow free pdf! statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/08/25/b...

PyMC-Marketing v1.0 is live! Stable Bayesian marketing analytics by PyMC Labs: • Multidimensional & ~1.5x faster • Predicted Incrementality (PIE) • Funnel-Aware MMM • Long-Term Brand Effects Docs & Release: dub.sh/NIB4SZm #MMM #PyMC

Norm Matloff (1948-2026) @matloff.bsky.social I was made aware of the post below made by his daughter. We lost another friend and valued long-time contributor the #Rstats community, gone far too soon, and sure to be missed. His memory will be a blessing.

Are data scientists losing sight of what matters in the AI era? I think measurement—not just building apps—is our real value. Here's why focusing on evaluation beats chasing full-stack roles. What do you think? Comment or share if this resonates! buff.ly/Ff6Ch6w #.datascience #.ai

What data science is actually about in the age of AI

written by Eric Ma on 2026-05-20 | tags: measurement llms evaluation reliability engineering science expertise tools roles product

buff.ly

✈️ Excited to be speaking at @pydatalondon.bsky.social this year! My talk, “Hazards on the Causal Path” will cover Mediation in Survival time modelling with @pymc.io . This gets at differences between process and intervention semantics in causal inference. See you there! pretalx.com/pydata-londo...

Though not without their flaws, Universities they have *already* done more to drive economic development and innovation than pretty much any other human institution, and that's in addition to creating informed citizens and otherwise enriching the human experience. The evidence for this is...

A concise summary of the riddle of induction.

noam@noamchompers.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I think they’re different. God could whisper in your ear that the principle of the uniformity of nature is true, and Goodman shows that you’d *still* have a problem of *which* putative uniformities are the relevant ones. Anyway thats how I think about it

New paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: we apply linguistic tools to sperm whale vowels. The result: sperm whale vowels do not just look like human vowels. They also behave like them. We found several parallels. Like in Latin, whales have short and long vowels.

Finally finished up a blog post on estimating Bradley–Terry models using brms. www.m-flynn.com/posts/2025-1...

Meanwhile in Dublin - @dubcitycouncil.bsky.social insists on "pruning" trees to take them back to stumps. No idea what their logic is but I have a few guesses

Brent Toderian@brenttoderian.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Vancouver’s urban tree canopy, and the “kissing canopies” over streets that mature trees create, are one of our city’s most important assets. Cooling, cleaning, beautifying & strengthening the city. Keep/grow this as we add more neighbours (but not more cars). Nice pic via @traffictrish.bsky.social

Nutpie: state-of-the-art mass matrix adaptation for HMC statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/20/n...

Really looking forward the Python March-Meet-up in Dublin. I'll be speaking about Skill Estimation with IRT models in @pymc.io We'l gauge skill and aggregate votes over agents to stress test the Condorcet Jury Theorem. 👉 Meetup Link: lnkd.in/d4bgGyAk 👉 Link to initial work: lnkd.in/dQ9TfFsa

Python Ireland March 2026 Meetup, Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 6:30 PM | Meetup

**Talk: Skill Estimation, Agents and the Condorcet Jury theorem.** The Condorcet Jury Theorem promises that groups are smarter than individuals — add more voices, get clos

meetup.com

"a great-books model at the undergraduate level is, in fact, so consonant with Freire’s radical critique that it represents a far better path forward for a left-wing vision of education than virtually anything else currently on offer in the US" thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

The Left Case for Great Books | The Point Magazine

A great-books model at the undergraduate level is, in fact, so consonant with Freire’s radical critique that it represents a far better path forward for a left-wing vision of education than virtually ...

thepointmag.com

New blog post: The Legibility Trap - Why Organizations Fail in Lockstep I stress test the Condorcet Jury theorem with Bayesian Item Response models and @pymc.io Highlighting the role and importance of diversity in collective decision making nathanielf.github.io/posts/post-w...

📘 Mixed Logit (Random Coefficients Logit) is now documented & available in @pymc-labs.bsky.social 's pymc-marketing www.pymc-marketing.io/en/latest/no... We’ve added a full mixed logit implementation to the consumer choice module. 🧵⬇️

New tutorial: Bayesian Dynamic Path Analysis in @pymc.io Why do New Year's resolutions fail so reliably? The statistical answer involves time-varying causal effects and masked mediation. Full tutorial (code + math + Odyssey metaphor): nathanielf.github.io/posts/post-w... 🧵 Thread Below

Final blogpost of the year: in which I enthuse about Alex Meehan and Snow Zhang’s excellent recent paper ‘Bayes is Back’!

Bayesianism when learning isn't straightforward

Occasionally, you come across a paper you like so much, you feel the need to evangelise about it.

open.substack.com

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

The next online installment of ESTIMATE: The Reduced Form is coming on Dec 11-12. I've continued to unify and expand regression-based methods to apply to exit, non-binary treatments, DDD, discrete outcomes, and more. All proceeds to the MSU economics PhD program. econ.msu.edu/academics/es...

🧵 I spoke yesterday at @python.org's PyCon Ireland 2025 at UCD on Bayesian workflows + Structural Equation Models (SEMs) — exploring how we can infer latent preferences from noisy behavioural signals. youtu.be/NS7SjHDSdmA?...

Nathaniel Forde - Bayesian Workflow - PyCon Ireland 2025

YouTube video by Nathaniel Forde

youtu.be

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

The official home of the Python Programming Language

python.org

This may just be the best CS paper I’ve read this year. Just read the abstract and first para of the intro! The rest of the intro is really wild too, but very very good: dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

This is a very nice demonstration of the power of GAMs.

Nick Clark 💹@njclark.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Most Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) models assume customer behavior is linear. But what if it isn't? I built an #rstats GAM for SaaS revenue prediction that captures: → Nonlinear adoption curves → Tier-specific behaviors → Feature value with uncertainty ecogambler.netlify.app/blog/clv-pre...

The BBC’s The Great Philosophers series with Bryan Magee is some of the best television ever made. It’s brilliant - no bells & whistles, no flashy gimmicks to hide a lack of substance. Just two people talking and thinking carefully. It’s being re-run on BBC4, but it’s also available online.

The Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee (1987) - YouTube

High Quality Reuploads (1987)

youtube.com

Books Upstairs is a fine store with a particularly excellent poetry section. Why not support them by ordering your books online instead: booksupstairs.ie

The Irish Times@irishtimes.com · last yr.

‘Really shocking’: Independent Dublin bookstore damaged in arson attack