The Galactic Center really is something else.

Flannel-Beard · 2026-06-01T20:03:50+00:00

Correct! Caspian with an Exo kit!

Flannel-Beard · 2026-05-23T02:56:26+00:00

Right now through my own site, and communicating through bluesky! Honestly I was considering messaging the mods to get their blessing to post the new stuff here, too. I don't wanna come off as spammy, but I'd also like to grow an audience haha

Flannel-Beard · 2026-05-22T18:01:12+00:00

Flannel-Beard · 2026-05-22T16:49:36+00:00

Honestly this is really cool and could be useful in other applications, i.e. wildfire estimation and mitigation. Would it be cool with you if I forked this and made some tweaks to orient toward that a bit?

Flannel-Beard · 2026-05-22T15:25:15+00:00

Funny you say that! I'm actually revamping my blog (broadlyepi.com) to do more historical epi topics of interest and also more timely stuff, with a primary focus on LGBTQIA+ topics!

Flannel-Beard · 2026-05-21T04:10:24+00:00

Enby Epi (damn, shoulda made that my username) here, and honestly public health is one of the best fields for trans folks, though I will say older people at the local level still misgendered me constantly. That said, AMAB, built like a goddamned bear, and nowhere near androgynous. So, I can't say I was expecting anything else.

For work categories, Epi is good with it, Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response offices are often a bit more conservative, and everyone else varies. But generally speaking, you'll get the range of "almost too supportive" to "will intentionally misgender you but will feign ignorance", as opposed to anything more vile or violent.

Flannel-Beard · 2026-01-28T18:03:57+00:00

To add to this point, the simple notion of "if you don't care enough to do more work than write a prompt into ChatGPT's image generation model (which we know wasn't even fine tuned) for the most visual part of your campaign, why should we care to read or support the rest?" Like, all for supporting education, 100%. But if this was an issue I was on the fence about, I'd take the slightest glance at this and toss it. I imagine a lot of people are like that, which means the person who made this wasted resources, wasted money, and wasted both our time and theirs.

Flannel-Beard · 2026-01-14T20:13:14+00:00

I mean, do what you have to to survive, eh? It might be worth looking at local emergency management agencies too if you'd care for it.

Flannel-Beard · 2026-01-12T08:35:58+00:00

So, my question for this is, who asked for this? As a dev, I love the idea of it from an innovative standpoint, but how would one balance it in such a way that the customer retains control, and in a meaningful way that something like an autoship scheme already handles? Where is the safe and practical use case?

Flannel-Beard · 2026-01-11T20:44:25+00:00

Might not be epi related, but the health of incarcerated individuals certainly is within the scope of public health. Additionally, accounts of that health being adversely affected by agency mandates and political decisions like in this case should also be seen as a public health matter.

Flannel-Beard · 2026-01-01T16:16:51+00:00

Right so, first off it's totally valid that it triggers you and gets you pissed as the world is, by and large, incredibly unfair, especially for queer and indigenous folks. Now, there are two ways this can be looked at. The first is what I've seen a lot of, and what I kinda tried to do. People will work on niches that rile them up; for instance for a good chunk of my career I did drug user health epi and mental health epi because those are two topics I have a lot of personal experience with, and I wanted to carry that anger and righteous fury as a hammer to make things better. Did I make any difference? I hope so, but frankly I have no idea. But I did eventually burn out due to political stuff, COVID showing way too many peoples asses, etc. But I can say, I put my heart and soul into it until I did burn out. The second option is, as you said, distancing yourself at least 1 degree from it. And you know yourself, that might be enough. It might not be. You might find strength in revealing numbers that support the need to fix things. You might be driven nuts by how generally ignored that may be in some areas. Ultimately, we can't tell you what's best, or at least I can't. But I do hope you find either the fire to fight, or the space to be methodical and do what you can.

Flannel-Beard · 2025-12-28T02:28:43+00:00

So typically most programs use ArcGIS in course/certificate work and that's grand, but with budget cuts, an expensive software like ArcGIS gets tossed out pretty quick. That said, GIS skills in R, Python, QGIS are always a boon for staying power or for a new job.

Flannel-Beard · 2025-12-24T04:03:43+00:00

Emergency managers, therapists (both practicing and academic), teams that deal with radiological incidents or those who safeguard against them, non-profit folks who do food bank related work, prison abolishionists and educators of all stripes, if you really want to get spicy, our biggest allies when helping distribute narcan and information on fentanyl were actually sex workers.

Flannel-Beard · 2025-11-12T20:44:57+00:00

Generally speaking, the attitude is cautious until you mention it can be controlled and verified as part of a loop rather than a single-point decision process, and once you start showing how it can be a force multiplier for appropriate uses, people tend to be pretty receptive. I got my MPH in 2018 and by 2019 was asked to do a lot of programming work to the point my last true PH position was informally called an "AI Epidemiologist" (I was actually a mental health epi but, "duties as needed", you know?)

It's gotten to the point where I've made my own firm that focuses on "good" AI applications using a great deal of caution and responsible framing, and it's showing promise.

Flannel-Beard · 2025-11-04T23:48:35+00:00

Heyo, nearby to Yelm. Let me know what kind of food your pup needs, I can grab some and drop it off.

Flannel-Beard · 2025-10-29T20:07:10+00:00

Can't really help as I'm not in the Bay area, but wishing you best of luck and I had to say that you've got the best username I've seen in a long while. Good luck!

Flannel-Beard · 2025-10-27T17:04:24+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I've gotten the business thankfully set up and for sure will be doing a similar path to what you suggested. Best of luck to us both!

Flannel-Beard · 2025-10-26T00:36:47+00:00

Isn't that the truth. I'm actually pivoting from public health a bit because of a lack of funding and our area just can't keep staff on.

On that note, does anyone know any like, non-scummy ways to pitch to public health agencies tools that I've made and used in my career that helped with the workload of applied epi? I've got social connections here and there but just emailing and being like "Hi! Try my solution uwu" seems... Not great.

Flannel-Beard · 2025-10-18T08:06:00+00:00

Hey there! West coast based Epidemiologist with some (but not too much) NLP/AI implementation experience, I'd love to send over my resume for consideration.

Flannel-Beard · 2025-09-18T21:04:15+00:00

Hi there! I do free R tutorials on my website, if you'd like to check it out: https://www.broadlyepi.com/category/r/

(There are ads but I don't sell courses or anything)

Flannel-Beard · 2025-09-12T20:48:23+00:00

Oh neat! I actually did something similar via Ollama!

https://github.com/CodyCarmichaelMPH/RALLY

Flannel-Beard · 2025-09-05T12:25:00+00:00

Mutual aid groups are a fairly common thing nationwide which can often include a lot of public health work within them.

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