this week i

landed at mississippi missouri confluence, namesake a different monarch than louisiana's sun king, paint louis lol.  please use other door infinite loop, dall-e could not mobius strip macaroni twist the top center of the arch, sands of time dna looks ok.  in town for the symposium on data science and statistics, i most marvel at, just, you know, statistically, of all humans in all history, how we got such nourishing food and safe, comfortable shelter?

 
 

 

 
enjoyed roger peng's plenary, he spoke about the direct to consumer movement of academia.  decisions can be made without data, it happens all the time.  the chi-squared symbol looks like a children's toy that had come to life but then needed to freeze quickly because a human entered the room and turned on the light.  christine zhang at nyt designed their full first front and back printed paper when covid crossed one million, coined data visceralization for when an infographic makes you feel.  and me?  all i did was draw a population density map based on this one here


attended quality short course: machine learning foundations - a hands-on introduction taught by william franz lamberti.  parameter insignificant?  leave it in.  the eu has passed laws that require a doctor explain a model to a patient, which bars certain prediction algorithms because black boxes

 

6/1

this week i

attended american community survey data user's conference, they're not sure whether to make it synthetic.  census bureau only on its 26th director

wish weird al would cover gandhi by the cranberries. my most promising tinder match: hi, i like french fries. if you like texting, let's get married pls

watched omkara: bollywood's othello.  desdemona first woman played by a woman.  she who can dupe her own father will never be anyone's to claim

listened to rachel bronson justify clock close to midnight. ta-nehisi coates also noticed equipment overload at corniche ouest. fox news quoted hillary




drew still life with googly eyes, maybe tablecloth and green onions next time.  some emoji sentences: πŸ”πŸ”πŸ”πŸ”πŸ”πŸ”πŸŒ‹ // πŸ—ΌπŸͺ‚ // πŸš™πŸ’¨  πŸš“πŸš“πŸš“


read bring out your dead: the great plague of yellow fever in philadelphia in 1793 by john harvey powell

their infections could obviously be traced to the noxious effluvia of the rotting coffee

take of rue, wormwood, and lavender, of each one handful; put these altogether with a gallon of the best vinegar into a stone pan, covered over with paste, and let them stand within the warmth of a fire, to infuse for eight days - then strain them off, and to every quart bottle put three quarters of an ounce of camphor.  let the camphor be dissolved before it is put into bottles.  rub the temples and loins with this preparation before going out in a morning, wash the mouth, and snuff up some of it into the nostrils, and carry a piece of sponge that has been dipped in it, in order to smell to pretty often

less worldly writers deemed the fever caused by the pride and corruption of the citizens, their playhouses, circus, palaces, carriages, and costly edifices; they commended prayer and submission to god in place of flight or medicine

amulets of dried frogs

an appeal to bankers urged that all notes be renewed so the respectable inhabitants could leave the city - a live debtor was a better risk than a dead one

"hereafter my name should be shadrach, mesach or abednego..for i am sure the preservation of those men from death by fire was not a greater miracle than my preservation from infection of the prevailing disorder"

i even saw one of the diseased, who having nauseated his medicine, discharged the contents of his stomach upon his benefactor.  what did girard then do? - entirely devoted to the public welfare, firm and immovable, and forgetting himself to think only of the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, whom he wished to succour; he wiped the patient's cloaths, comforted, and by the force of persuasion and patience, induced him to swallow the remedy

the principal mortality of the disease is now from the doctors

many more favorable notices of mercury and bleeding appeared than unfavorable.  letters from patients bearing grateful witness to the success of dr. rush's cure overwhelmed the few protests against it, and the small company of mercury doctors were as ready with the pen as with the lancet.  rush magnified doubts into enmity; he also magnified consent into virtue

the new little baby died; but winter came on, and she and her older son recovered.  they returned with her mother to the city, where mrs. payne began to take gentlemen boarders.  the handsome young widow of lawyer todd was an appealing spectacle.  senator aaron burr certainly thought so, and he was accounted by all to be an excellent judge.  it was senator burr who introduced dolly todd to congressman james madison of virginia.  that the distinguished statesman was twenty years her senior, even that he was a head shorter than she, did not long deter the lady of john todd's heart.  eleven months after john's death dolly married james madison, and entered upon a career that would have amazed her simple, adoring quaker lawyer.  dolly madison's role in history began in the yellow fever of 1793

this was the height of the plague, the height of demoralization, of despair, the height of disaster.  the city was no human thing at all, but a place of quivering stench and filth, a place ruled by unreason.  everyone realized the uselessness of garlic, nitre, vinegar, tar, and camphor, but still they clung to their familiar nostrums from force of habit, took some comfort in their astringent smells.  every superstition, every homely legend, every traditional remedy was preserved, in all its ineffectualness.  tobacco was the universal preventive.  young henry s. drinker went out for a walk in germantown with a segar in his mouth.  he had never smoked before; the segar turned him to a green sweat.  he staggered around to george hesser's orchard to discharge his stomach, fearful of doing so on the road lest people suspect him of having the fever.  back in his mother's parlor he was sick and pale

stephen girard resumed his lonely existence, going from one service to another, rising higher in the esteem of philadelphians, withdrawing further from their midst, finally crowning his endless efforts with the largest bequest to public charities that the modern world had ever seen


5/25

this week i

double-took at a skin-tight leopard print crop top to confirm wasn't leopard print arm sleeve tattoo. picasso copied hokusai, ai may change much
 
a cambrian explosion of use cases
 
churning out persuasive-sounding answers in response to any prompt, they are brilliant but brainless mimics, with no guarantee that their output is anything more than a digital hallucination
 
every single major content provider in the world thought they needed a metaverse strategy; they all need a generative media strategy
 






peaches in the summertime
apples in the fall
if i can't have the girl i love
i don't want none at all

 

completed episode 150, henry the 8th reforms church, beheads queen elizabeth's mother.  because almost all reading was done out loud at the time

 

read where the crawdads sing by delia owens

i can't count as high as that many gulls are

you just shit fire an' fall in it

if she ever became a poet, she'd make the message clear

she's outrun everybody for years.  truant officers, census takers, you name it, she's outwit 'em all

her family never had a pet.  not one dog or cat.  the only thing close was the female skunk - a silky, slinky, and sassy creature - who lived under the shack.  ma called her chanel

ordinary light is shattered by microscopic prisms in the feathers of hummingbirds

you can't get hurt when you love someone from the other side of an estuary

grits were listed on the menus as polenta in mushroom sauce and cost $6.00

like a lady firefly

 

5/18

this week i

anoint thee a wooden door after three beers.  ray charles and willie nelson sound good.  that dude dominates the algorithm.  //  oh?  word.  we are closer to captain james tiberius kirk's birthday than we are to the war of 1812, or as it is locally known, the war of southern aggression

they could hear the riders coming
he said, this will be my last fight
if they take me back to texas
they won't take me back alive

 

attended deer in headlights. quebecois license plate can only be read as a whispered threat.  are you american? // no, we're canadian. // oh soh-ree


watercolor penciled still life, six kiwis as stonehenge. a separate still life with googly eyes forthcoming, thwarted this time by non-self-adhesion. dog




 

read meaning, medicine and the 'placebo effect' by daniel moerman

placebo domino: "i shall please the lord"

an epithet given to any medicine adapted more to please than benefit the patient

sometimes, a bandage on a cut finger works better if it has a picture of snoopy on it

the diagnosis in itself exercised a therapeutic effect for the patient inasmuch as it provided an understandable, acceptable explanation for his behavior

the very fact that conventional medicine relies so strongly on the randomized controlled trial, often referred to as the "gold standard" of medicine, rests on the fact that people get better when they take inert medications

i was very impressed with him, especially when i heard he was the team doctor with the [houston] rockets....so, sure, i went ahead and signed up for this new thing he was doing...the surgery was two years ago and the knee never has bothered me since.  it's just like my other knee now.  i give a whole lot of credit to dr. moseley.  whenever i see him on tv during a basketball game, i call the wife in and say, "hey, there's the doctor that fixed my knee"

[injected] placebo is more effective than the oral placebo

new blood vessels ("angiogenesis")

researchers noticed that men who took most of their prescribed clofibrate, more than 80% of what was prescribed, did better than the men who took less.  after five years, only 15.7% of the good adherers had died, while 22.5% of the poor adherers had died.  the message seems to be "take all your medicine."  but it is more complicated than this because the same thing happened with the placebo patients.  men who took more than 80% of their placebos had a five-year mortality rate of 16.4% while those who took less had a mortality rate of 25.8%

if you expect that a cup of coffee will wake you up, it will, even if some sneaky researcher has secretly given you decaffeinated coffee

among the most important and powerful medicinal plants used by the iroquois are those known to grow on graves

 

 5/11

 

 

this week i

published on medicare advantage overtaking the fee-for-service program nationwide, among those eligible to choose between the two

passed rosemarie's to the st lawrence watershed civilization, francylvania to be precise.   this lovely honda crv in quebec city thar be dragonsed me



watched ronnie burkett yada yada shakespeare, convince three audience members to undress sans hypnosis.  still life worse than whiskey in the jar

 

memorized the yukon song.  elderly quebecer wore what i can only assume was an unironic beret.  online dating: same hit rate as those claw games


watched broadway danny rose then john cusack impersonate woody allen in bullets over broadway.  [toasts] to an ideal world with no compromise

you actually burned down your school?  //  it was lincoln's birthday.  there was nobody there


read the voyage of the beagle by charles fucking darwin.  only thirty of the four hundred eighty pages devoted to the galapagos.  the book which had the most profound effect on darwin was charles lyell's principles of geology..darwin did not write his beagle narrative with a coherent theory of human evolution in mind; awakened curiosity and uncertainty best describe the mood governing his observations

we were bivouacking late one evening near coquimbo, in chile, when my servant, noticing that one of the horses was very restive, went to see what was the matter, and fancying he could distinguish something, suddenly put his hand on the beast's withers, and secured the vampire

a fine specimen of the yagouaroundi cat

i carried with me some promethean matches, which i ignited by biting; it was thought so wonderful that a man should strike fire with his teeth, that it was usual to collect the whole family to see it

we passed the night in punta alta, and i employed myself in searching for fossil bones; this point being a perfect catacomb for monsters of extinct races

we did not reach the posta on the rio tapalguen till after it was dark.  at supper, from something which i said, i was suddenly struck with horror at thinking that i was eating one of the favourite dishes of the country, namely, a half-formed calf, long before its proper time of birth.  it turned out to be a puma; the meat is very white, and remarkably like veal in taste.  dr shaw was laughed at for stating that 'the flesh of the lion is in great esteem, having no small affinity with veal, both in colour, taste, and flavour.'  such certainly is the case with the puma.  the gauchos differ in their opinion, whether the jaguar is good eating, but are unanimous in saying that cat is excellent

my passport, which began with 'el naturalista don carlos'

it was snowing butterflies

the phosphorescence of the sea

except when rising from the ground, i do not recollect ever having seen one of these birds flap its wings

a strong desire is always felt to ascertain whether any human being has previously visited an unfrequented spot.  a bit of wood with a nail in it, is picked up and studied as if it were covered with hieroglyphics.  possessed with this feeling, i was much interested by finding, on a wild part of the coast, a bed made of grass beneath a ledge of rock.  close by it there had been a fire, and the man had used an axe.  the fire, bed, and situation showed the dexterity of an indian; but he could scarcely have been an indian, for the race is in this part extinct, owing to the catholic desire of making at one blow christians and slaves

the mule always appears to me a most surprising animal.  that a hybrid should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life, than either of its parents, seems to indicate that art has here outdone nature

 the assumption of the immutability of species

the happy doom of the mendozinos is to eat, sleep, and be idle

we rode on to ballenar, which takes its name from ballenagh in ireland, the birthplace of the family of o'higgins, who, under the spanish government, were presidents and generals in chile

young tortoises make excellent soup

the well-beaten paths made by the thousands of huge tortoises..there is no other quarter of the world where this order replaces herbivorous mammalia in so extraordinary a manner

 captain porter has described those from charles and from the nearest island to it, namely, hood island, as having their shells in front thick and turned up like a spanish saddle, whilst the tortoises from james island are rounder, blacker, and have a better taste when cooked

the all-powerful and never-tiring waves of that great sea, miscalled the pacific

i believe we were all glad to leave new zealand.  it is not a pleasant place.  amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found at tahiti; and the greater part of the english are the very refuse of society.  neither is the country itself attractive

the sloping plain of the pamplemousses

a traveller should be a botanist

 5/4

this week i

published our collaboration with the california health care foundation, this cartoon-ready duo. is anything on earth as beautiful as the rings of saturn?

 

attended the survey of income and program participation (be thoughtful about how you aggregate) then panel study of income dynamics (this is where i had it like a cooking show) short courses.  work start and end time one of the most sensitive questions, respondents worried about theft.  the 1999 supreme court decision barred the census from modifying the apportionment data with the post-enumeration survey.  the official count of linear age fluctuates like a heartbeat due to age-heaping: when neighbors estimate but round to five.  director robert santos said the words "dirty data" and opined about a time when "the next hot thing was landline telephone surveys" adding my own "there's no replication crisis in poverty research."  poster sessions most fun nowadays.  regarding diurnal variation in poverty i heard the words "a poverty rate can rise and fall throughout the day" and, elsewhere, "bayesian model to adjust for non-representativeness" plus multiple appearances of attrition's verb attrit.  what time is it?  attritin' time


met at terminal one, slammed as many beers, saw three dog night karaoke, next samira.  ruffles the younger jazzed till he realized just him and me


 

watched country music by ken burns.  merle haggard in johnny cash's san quentin audience, ring of fire mariachi, hank williams wrote jambalaya

why should the devil have all the good tunes?

itzhak perlman: we are all fiddle players

 the banjo: it's hard to ignore because it's so percussive

those songs were captured rather than written

tuberculosis - at the time, the leading cause of death

i want to die with my shoes on

a signal so overpowering local ranchers heard the music on their barbed wire fences

"just love them honey," he said, "and they'll love you right back"

tom dooley (perhaps l.a. county also): murder ballad

marty robbins on el paso: this won't sell 500 records but it's something i've always wanted to do

dolly parton: i was on television before we ever owned one  //  i'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes.  because i know i'm not dumb.  and i'm not blonde, either

on bobby mcgee (a woman named mckee): and i called kris..don't be alone when you hear this

 
read east of eden by john steinbeck, a book about heteropaternal superfecundation

cyrus trask mourned for his wife with a keg of whiskey and three old army friends who had dropped in on their way home to maine.  baby adam cried a good deal at the beginning of the wake, for the mourners, not knowing about babies, had neglected to feed him.  cyrus soon solved the problem.  he dipped a rag in whiskey and gave it to the baby to suck, and after three dippings young adam went to sleep.  several times during the mourning period he awakened and complained and got the dipped rag again and went to sleep.  the baby was drunk for two days and a half.  whatever may have happened in his developing brain, it proved beneficial to his metabolism: from that two and a half days he gained an iron health.  and when at the end of three days his father finally went out and bought a goat, adam drank milk greedily, vomited, drank more, and was on his way.  his father did not find the reaction alarming, since he was doing the same thing

the wooden leg made a side semicircle to get ahead when its turn came

once when he was very ill samuel asked, "liza, couldn't i have a glass of whiskey to ease me?" ... "would you go to the throne of god with liquor on your breath?"

in due course adam gave his name to a clerk and went to sit in the anteroom.  his father found him there.  it took adam a moment to recognize cyrus, and much longer to get used to him.  cyrus had become a great man.  he dressed like a great man - black broadcloth coat and trousers, wide black hat, overcoat with a velvet collar, ebony cane which he made to seem a sword.  and cyrus conducted himself like a great man.  his speech was slow and mellow, measured and unexcited, his gestures were wide, and new teeth gave him a vulpine smile out of all proportion to his emotion

people are felt rather than seen after the first few moments

"he would have admitted climbing the golden stairs and cutting st. peter's throat with a bowling ball," the judge said.  "be more careful, mike.  the law was designed to save, not to destroy"

"i can't understand why a girl like you-" he began, and fell right into the oldest conviction in the world - that the girl you are in love with can't possibly be anything but true and honest

things grow so fast in california they say you have to plant and step back quick or you'll get knocked down

another man, but he was crazy, said that someday there'd be a way, maybe ice, maybe some other way, to get a peach like this here i got in my hand clear to philadelphia

as a very young child she had learned to win by using the momentum of her opponent.  it was easy to guide a man's strength where it was impossible to resist him

"he was a spaniard, wasn't he?  they're artistic people, i've heard.  i remember in school about a painter - no, he was a greek"

there are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension

we chinese have a well-developed demonology

he moved around as if he was alive but he left no evidence.  the lord in his wisdom gave money to very curious people, perhaps because they'd starve without

"samuel, do you think you can move this rock of a man?" // "why, i don't know, mother."  he had not expected this.  "i don't know." // "do you think it is such an important matter that those babies have names right now?"

i feel murder nudging my gizzard

when a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else

i wouldn't have minded so much if she had wanted my death.  that would have been a kind of love.  but i was an annoyance, not an enemy

isn't it odd that cain is maybe the best-known name in the whole world and as far as i know only one man has ever borne it?

and the lord set a mark upon cain, lest any finding him should kill him.  and cain went out from the presence of the lord and dwelt in the land of nod on the east of eden

that thing about time doing the job dynamite can't touch

the american standard translation
orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance.  the king james translation makes a promise in 'thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin.  but the hebrew word, the word timshel - 'thou mayest' - that gives a choice.  it might be the most important word in the world.  that says the way is open.  for if 'thou mayest' - it is also true that 'thou mayest not'

all money, property, and securities to be divided equally between you and your wife

you sound like some goat-foot with a wheat flute on a hill in greece

he hung the receiver up and dressed.  in angry weariness he opened the wall cabinet and collected scalpels and clamps, sponges and tubes of sutures, to put in his bag.  he shook his gasoline pressure lantern to make sure it was full and arranged ether can and mask beside it on his bureau.  his wife in boudoir cap and nightgown looked in.  dr. tilson said, "i'm walking over to the garage.  call will hamilton.  tell him i want him to drive me to his father's place.  if he argues tell him his sister is - dying"

p.s. i notice that polly has not reformed one bit.  that parrot makes me blush

she walked on, and a falsetto followed her, "oh, aron, i do love you so"

clock-ticking silence

they thought she would be weak and delicate.  she smiled to herself - delicate like a steel trap

and they were silent, for it was too late to say hello and too early to begin other things

the manila envelopes were glued together with blackened blood.  the sheriff dampened the papers with a wet handkerchief to get them apart.  he read the will, which had been folded, so that the blood was on the outside.  he laid it aside and inspected the photographs in the envelopes.  he sighed deeply

do you know where your brother is?

 

 4/28

this week i

exited asia to oaxacan dinner.  heathrow airport before entry flight, i'd ordered fish tacos, those were the final mexican anythings i'll ever eat again outside of north america.  you all just haven't a friend with an honest abuela yet.  past five months: south asian food, southeast asian food, east asian food, hamburgers, pizza, french desserts.  not far from lifelong averages, except in north america triweekly mexican cuisine, maybe more varied ice cream. legend has it (modern slang for "i read the headline, didn't click the link") one australian taco shop adds raisins.  airsick bag full

calibrated at san jose day. mapquest doesn't know where the clitoris is, santa cruz will have to do. monkeys with prehensile tails: look ma, no hands!





met john on the bayou.  why does a beard equal cthulhu?  stylistically i've always wanted to look like the grinch.  rocky blue man marshmallowed the swamp from airboat christened master gator.  we listened to clown kiss cover bands at french quarter festival, faced northwest on saint ann street, agreed we'd never seen credentials on a gravestone, dreamt what angry letters to send the nobel peace prize committee, in crayon of course






 

sketched ruffles noir.  quebec city opener: your female name paul pronounced exactly like chicken.  how did that one make it through the ages?


 

read the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald

dinner was announced: wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, tom buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square

"it was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train.  i was going up to new york to see my sister and spend the night.  he had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and i couldn't keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me i had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head.  when we came into the station he was next to me, and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, and so i told him i'd have to call a policeman, but he knew i lied.  i was so excited that when i got into a taxi with him i didn't hardly know i wasn't getting into a subway train.  all i kept thinking about, over and over, was 'you can't live forever; you can't live forever'"

one of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks - at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed: "you promised!" into his ear

philadelphia wants you on the 'phone, sir

the world's series had been fixed in 1919, but if i had thought of it at all i would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain.  it never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people - with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe

by the next year i had a few beaux myself

 her voice is full of money

i'll make you a mint julep.  then you won't seem so stupid to yourself

"he won't touch her," i said.  "he's not thinking about her"

 



4/20