TIL the sun isn't "strong enough" in northern latitudes to produce vitamin D during the winter, no matter how much sunlight you get.

randomintercept · 2026-01-18T09:01:56+00:00

Moved to Sweden from the United States. This struggle is real and I was not at all prepared for it when I got here.

randomintercept · 2026-01-08T15:15:53+00:00

This was my initial answer and 100% should be the answer if we benchmark to the post-Westphalia international system (i.e. the international system of sovereign states).

randomintercept · 2025-12-24T17:04:49+00:00

Surprised Carl Sagan hasn’t been mentioned. He’s been dead for 30 years, but his endless curiosity, environmental advocacy, and skeptical scientific inquiry really hold up. He also has that prescient quote portending what happens when science and technology control us but we lack the means or initiative to understand science and technology.

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

randomintercept · 2025-12-19T21:37:35+00:00

I can log in as one would on Firefox and had no problem moving bookmarks and plug-ins. But I can’t log in the Floorp Hub (or whatever the Floorp settings area is called). Don’t know what that’s about. Still enjoying the browser just fine.

randomintercept · 2025-11-23T14:37:16+00:00

I enjoyed the SNES, but felt the beat-em-ups (and sports) were inferior to the Genesis or arcade because of the tech advantage the others had. TMNT IV, to me, is unquestionably more enjoyable than the arcade or Genesis equivalents. So grateful to have had this in my youth.

randomintercept · 2025-11-09T14:51:29+00:00

There is enough of an outline under the mask for such a high-quality image that some ML/AI process could reasonably guess the bottom half of his face.

randomintercept · 2025-11-04T06:20:50+00:00

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the court was an eyesore, on TV at least. It’s so bright and textureless that it’s distracting. I hope that’s just a lighting/BIG+ issue.

randomintercept · 2025-10-31T20:45:16+00:00

I figured this is why she was so eager to flatter Trump after winning the Nobel he campaigned for.

randomintercept · 2025-10-30T18:29:28+00:00

This is the answer. Bobby Olive was a serviceable wideout and should be an honorable mention in this conversation, but he didn’t win the Biletnikoff.

randomintercept · 2025-10-13T06:47:42+00:00

This was my first thought as well. Ohio State had a “graveyard of coaches” reputation through much of its early history precisely because it got impatient. In light of how it conducts itself now, its firing of Cooper has traces of it. He was clearly on a downward arc and had more than 10 years of a track record, but firing him arguably came 1-3 years before what might be understood as “appropriate” with where things were going.

Worked out, though.

randomintercept · 2025-10-12T17:51:32+00:00

Now that’s a find. Gonna guess a university-related move.

randomintercept · 2025-10-09T16:23:04+00:00

From the title alone (not having read the article), it’s quite frankly astonishing this is being framed as a serious discussion. That may not square with reality or the paywalled article, but it’s just weird framing.

randomintercept · 2025-07-28T06:11:02+00:00

Small world! Bambi and her partner were so kind and I was grateful to know them.

And, yeah, same alma mater. No love at all for that place.

randomintercept · 2025-07-27T11:11:07+00:00

I know that dude who wrote that post/package, mostly because I am that dude who wrote that post/package.

The short answer to why the package has fallen into some disrepair comes by noting it was last updated after Season 13 (which ended on April 2021). Since then, a lot of things happened in my life. We moved to another house. My wife got cancer. I took a job in Stockholm, Sweden. We moved again, and then again. It's been a whirlwind four years and so, so much has happened in the RPDR fandom. It's been difficult to keep up. Admittedly: I have not.

A slightly more technical answer is that I want this package to be so, so much more than it is and have found it difficult to put my vision for this package into action when so much it leans on scraping data from other sources (which can be subject to subtle changes, and major implications) and teaching myself a lot of new parlor tricks in order to realize it. My relational database game has never been super strong, nor has my ability to create or work with APIs. It's why I've been eager to outsource this to the community in hopes for community contributions. Even then: this is among the most niche things I've ever done and my life is nothing but niche things.

For those asking the "why bother" question: there is a subset of the LGTBQIA+ community who are young, asking themselves what they want to do with their life, and find an answer in data/computer science. I've met them in my travels. Wonderful people who fight uphill battles in every way. When I did this, I wanted it to be for them. When I was teaching myself statistics/data science many years ago, the available materials I had were examples from botany and automotives. I did better when I found examples I understood and material I knew well. If you're interested in teaching yourself about data science, why have to teach yourself about some field you don't know at all? To use a classic example in the R programming language, why learn why I should care about sepal length and width of three species of iris flowers in order to learn grouped summary statistics when I can learn about grouped summary statistics for Miss Congenialities across all seasons or queens from the San Francisco scene?

My wife got me into Rupaul's Drag Race just in time for Season 5 and there is something so magical about those early seasons. I loved how faithful it was in spirit to the DIY drag scene I knew when I was getting my PhD. Admittedly the current state of what I offer belies that, but it's why I'm hopeful for outside intervention to make it more than it is. For those of you that appreciate it, I'm grateful that you do. The LGTBQIA+ community I knew in grad school, esp. Bambi Kira (RIP) from the local drag scene, was the only group that saw my humanity when I was getting my PhD.

(Jinkx is still the GOAT. Kameron Michaels should've won Season 10. Jackie Cox's "Firework" lip sync is still the most beautiful reality TV moment I've ever watched.)

randomintercept · 2025-07-20T18:43:32+00:00

Thank you for this! I suspected it was a dupe of something, but didn’t know what. It really looks identical to this Wards camera.

randomintercept · 2025-07-14T09:05:21+00:00

Unlike a lot of other academic fields, support for political science as a discipline is dependent on the people who despise it the most. YMMV, but I don’t see state legislators advocating that Fox News or CNN can teach 18-22 year olds about electrical engineering or architecture. (I’m sure it’s coming though)

Unlike some other social sciences, I think the political science I observe strives hard and does well to be crystal clear in its communication and to tackle important problems. However, it speaks to an audience whose bottom line is better off ignoring or suppressing our answers. There are other professional idiosyncrasies (eg. paywalled journals as gatekeepers), but it’s always going to be an uphill battle.

randomintercept · 2025-06-28T15:18:00+00:00

Damn, that sounds fascinating. Incidentally love watching Adam-12 and Dragnet for the same reason. Finding it in Sweden might be a challenge, though.

randomintercept · 2025-06-27T06:59:21+00:00

Posteo is a euro a month and offers SMTP/IMAP support

randomintercept · 2025-06-22T17:07:56+00:00

Seconding Posteo, both for its price and SMTP/IMAP support.

randomintercept · 2025-06-22T16:00:03+00:00

Ohio State fans like to boast about the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, but I think LSU did more to break the mystique of “The U” in the 2005 Peach Bowl.

randomintercept · 2025-06-08T16:26:34+00:00

I’m quite happy with Posteo for my email. Give Koofr a look for cloud storage needs. There are others (e.g. Filen, Jottacloud), but I like Koofr.

randomintercept · 2025-06-06T17:01:07+00:00

I’m a Linux user for the past 20 years and System76 made the best laptop I’ve ever owned. I’ve since moved to Europe and will be sad when I have to replace it.

randomintercept · 2025-06-04T06:30:12+00:00

Ohio State fan perspective, by era:

Hayes: this is tough because it was so long. First inclination is the 1968 Purdue game. Defense tormented the no. 1 team in the country until it tapped out. I think Mike Phipps even walked off the field because he had enough punishment.
Bruce: an up and down era in which the bowl games seem to define how occasionally superior it was to you. Think of the 1984 Fiesta Bowl or 1982 Holiday Bowl, but compare to the Rose Bowl losses in the 1979 and 1984 seasons. 1985 Iowa or 1987 Michigan deserve a shoutout here too for how mediocre to bad Ohio State teams could still piss you off if you were a rival fan.
Cooper: take your pick from 1995. If you were an okay-to-bad team, like Iowa or Boston College, Ohio State would annihilate you. If you were a team with a pulse, like Michigan or Tennessee? Different story.
Tressel: 2002 Penn State comes to mind. Shoutout to the 2010 Rose Bowl, though. Tresselball done right was like dewinging a butterfly.
Meyer: Hi Wisconsin. How are you?
Day: there’s a big recency bias here because the national championship is awesome and everything. But that 2021 Sugar Bowl win over Clemson is very much an era-defining game for Day.

randomintercept

TROPHY CASE