Notices by Kieran Healy (kjhealy@mastodon.social)

Chalk one up for the networks people. https://www.unibocconi.it/en/news/network-conclave

In Pope Safety Engineering, Time in Conclave, or TIC, is an inverse of MTBP (Mean Time Between Popes) the standard measure of Papal Infallibility. Continuous-time models are the expected value of a PDF (Pope Density Function). Simplified models may add a Mitre parameter, λ, to express a constant pope failure rate.

Although philosophers struggled with it for decades, solving the so-called “demarcation problem” is easy. Just ask

1) Do you get emails from cranks wanting to tell you about their theory [100 page docx file attached]?

2) Do you get emails from ambitious college-counseled high-schoolers wanting to be your RA?

If yes to both, you are doing science.

gonna send the lad in with this

My kid’s school is having a “1900s / No Tech” Spirit Week

Nice example for your Time Series Are Tricksy files. When “Compared to the same time last year” leads you astray because the same (calendar) date is not the same (social) time.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/30/world/us-travel-decline.html

Are the various problems with the NSF’s merit review and grant allocation system best served by simply destroying it and replacing it with groyper commissars whose views are based on a combination of social media forum screenshots and YouTubers who want to sell you supplements? In this essay I w

Nature reports that the NSF has stopped funding awardees entirely, “until further notice”. This administration is determined to destroy the country’s scientific research infrastructure by choking off funding and taking a wrecking ball to the merit review system.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2

I just had to convert ~20,000 html files, some quite large, to plain text (and one or two other formats), because reasons. I used pandoc, obvs. But this is also a good example of an embarrassingly parallel task. From the shell, GNU parallel is just the thing to make an otherwise lazy computer work a bit harder. The `:::` syntax is parallel's way of passing a list of files through to the command you're parallelizing.

@atpfm @siracusa There's a debate in the literature about the degree to which this idea is true, but there is a quite famous paper literally titled “A Fine is a Price”: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/468061

RIP to one of the great post-war American sociologists. An immigrant, a keen-eyed observer, and a real straight-talker his whole career. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/books/herbert-j-gans-dead.html

Happy Easter from Britain and Ireland’s most tortured 19th century hip-hop artist. (Quite seriously. That is what sprung rhythm is. Try it.)

I like how if you are discussing some large amount of money via text—like, a house price, or a federal grant or something, it doesn't matter—and you write out the number, then no matter what the number is Apple Pay will helpfully pop up and be like Hey! You need to send this cash to someone???

““Hi it’s Elon. Can we be friends? Will you be my friend? I’ll give you a cybertruck I promise.”

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/technology/2025/04/12/silicon-valley-crosswalk-buttons-apparently-hacked-to-imitate-musk-zuckerberg-voices/

Bad. I have upset more than one person in my life by introducing them to real butter instead of the tasteless pap it is somehow legal to sell under that name in this country. Upset because they realize they did not actually know what butter tasted like at all, and that they have been living a lie in Plato’s Margarine Cave, as it were. https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0406/1505938-irish-butter-us-tariffs/

Trump take Newegg
https://kotaku.com/switch-2-preorder-price-tariff-trump-nintendo-1851774764

The Vignelli map is BACK, baby https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/nyregion/nyc-new-subway-map.html

Pine Pollen season has arrived. In their normal state these bricks are red.

Ha, I remember this case. She paid $18k to a guy teaching data science at iirc CUNY to fake thousands of names and addresses of “customers” for her company, which she then sold to JP Morgan for $175 million in a flurry of 30-under-30 entrepreneurial genius slobbering. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/business/charlie-javice-jpmorgan-guilty.html

CONTROL: You weren’t followed?
SMILEY: No.
CONTROL: You're sure?
SMILEY: Quite sure.
ALLELINE: Always one for the tradecraft, our George.
BLAND (coughing): Can we begin?
CONTROL: Yes, yes.
KERMIT: Hi-ho! Kermit T. Frog here for Sesame Street News.
ALLELINE: George, take a look at this from Source Merlin. Absolute gold dust from start to finish.
SMILEY: Very well. But first, may I—may I ask a question?
CONTROL: Oh for heaven’s sake George what is it this time?
SMILEY: It's just—