Peter Licari

One might say that it was...Golden

Traveling for a conference. My view from this morning's run.

This some straight-up Torment Nexus bullshit

I've, regrettably, driven a fair amount through large cities over the last few years. And, upon reflection, I'm astounded that we so frequently design metro areas that are heavily car dependent but that ALSO have such inscrutable street layouts as to make driving deeply unpleasant!

I wrote a whole dissertation about video games and politics. I have thousands of hours clocked across the Halo franchise. I use GenAI for work and am one of the experts in it for my team. So I can confidently say, across multiple fields of expertise, that we are in the stupidest fucking timeline.

"The GOP is so keen on letting Donald Trump cosplay being a King that they're all willing to sacrifice your children's health and future in order to do it." How hard is that?!

Corruption is one of the top issues (if not THE top issue, depending on the survey) people feel is facing the country right now. Democrats don't even need to do all that much to frame this in a way that taps into that AND Kitchen Table™️ issues. The fact that so many won't even try is stupifying.

Misanthropic Thoughts What follows is not quite something I believe, nor even something I fear. It is something I fear I believe, my worst tendencies as a think...

Here are my worst socio-political thoughts. I hope I am not really the person who believes these things.

sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/10/misa...

Stab in the dark: But I'm going to guess that the person who implemented the Fire Stick parental password input where the passkey numbers are clearly visible to everyone watching does not, in fact, have children of their own.

Ah yes. Famously, the last time America had a King, a hallmark of his reign was his ability to prevent any demonstrations against his rule.

I will not refactor our modeling processes just because of a new cool stats paper I found I will not refactor our modeling processes just because of a new cool stats paper I found I will not refactor our modeling processes just because of a new cool stats paper I found I will not refactor our modeli

[Exit King.]

I don't have favorites, except for my beloved GLMM's.

Goddamn, what a deeply unserious government. My 5 year old has better tact.

The "verified" bit is because there appears to be 2 Dept of Education accounts where one seems like a fairly banal and legitimate government account and the other is flagrant propaganda.

Only one of these verified agency/department accounts isn't actively violating the Hatch Act---and it isn't the one you'd expect. (It's the TSA)

bsky.app/profile/did:...

I'd like to nominate Harry Frankfurt as the most influential Philosopher of the 21st century if for no other reason than he gave us all an amazing excuse to toss-in a couple instances of "bullshit" into our serious professional writings.

Taylor Swift can encourage people to register to vote, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us that she can get people to learn about Shakespeare.

Wikipedia page-hits for "Ophelia" spiked following the drop of the tracklist for "The Life of a Showgirl" as well as the album itself. #databs

For those tempted to say Young Republicans have always been this way, they really have not. When I worked on campus and did bipartisan college events after, they were very much not like this.

That’s why groups like YCT and eventually TPUSA formed — because Young Republicans weren’t radical enough.

"Warning: boundary (singular) fit"

US calls for China to release 30 leaders of influential underground church - BBC News Zion Church, founded by pastor Jin Mingri in 2007, is one of China's largest underground church networks.

See, this is something I would normally applaud this (or any) administration for pursuing---but I think all the pepper-spraying of priests domestically kinda erodes our moral authority and credibility on this.

www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc....

Data encoded by color

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand:

"Regression ran by ChatGPT"

I've said/amplified this a million times: We've all got to start posting more pets, foods, vacations, hobbies, and silliness. If you want your message to expand to others (and improve folks' sense of efficacy via diminishing dread), Bluesky has to become more than just a place about Trump.

Me, coming across a niche Sci-Fi reference in a stats textbook that I'm reading for fun: "Huh, I'm beginning to think that the author of this statistics textbook is some kind of nerd"

Not gonna lie, working at a theme park can be pretty sweet most days.

Finishing @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social's "Everything is Tuberculosis" and then, coincidentally, re-reading Poe's "Annabel Lee" on the same day is sure underscoring the truth in the title of the former.

GameStop's response to one of their stores still having a 'Halo 3' mural from 2007:

"We'll take it down when something better comes out"

A picture of a homemade pizza in the shape of a ghost.

Spooky Pizza night! 👻

I tested having different AI models transcribe my chicken-scratch handwriting.

Bing Chat: 85% of the words correct, mangled some concepts.
GPT5: 90% of the words correct, less mangling.
Gemini: Basically as good as GPT5 but also said "your handwriting isn't that bad", so we have a winner.