Alex Kale

Office desk without any personal items or decor

Today, along with 2,000 other NIH employees, I had to clear out my office 😭

It was truly the honor of my life to work with such incredibly passionate people focused on improving human health. I’ve never experienced a more positive culture where *everyone* cared about their job and serving others.

I wish more HCI research was this careful about measurement. If we do turn the corner, I think we’re gonna find out that a lot of our study results don’t mean what the authors originally said they meant.

Thanks to the wonderful folks at @dsi-uchicago.bsky.social for making this video!

I also use that data set, but I ask students to encode all the variables in the table, which rules out a CDF because it doesn’t show the bacteria names. Unless they add the names with annotations. That could be cool. Avoiding occlusion and crowding would be a challenge.

Such a disappointment. It’s illustrative of a deep political problem on the left, a sort of allergy to disagreement or information that goes against one’s priorities. This just isn’t a workable approach in a democracy, especially not for a “big tent” party.

What tech company will be the first to stand up and say that gutting the NSF is bad actually?

The economic argument seems pretty clear

Less NSF --> fewer PhD students --> fewer researchers --> smaller AI tech pipeline --> slower progress --> less competitive globally

Most of your life won’t go as planned. Stop placing your happiness, health, and self-actualization on the horizon.

My take is that the “pause” rhetoric is bullshit. They want to defund the universities, full stop. Idk why people are in denial that this is the game plan, to eviscerate centers of power on the left starting with educational institutions and government agencies staffed by lefty technocrats.

“The executive orders make it quite clear that certain DEI activities are considered to violate current law, and we cannot fund anything that includes activities deemed unlawful.” Okay, but until a few weeks ago, promises about DEI were required. Idk how any of our grants survive this litmus test.

This is what I thought you were saying, that true marginal density estimation requires different samples, but I wasn’t completely sure. Thanks!

I think I’m guilty of misusing Monte Carlo integration in this way. Not 100% sure what to do differently, but I appreciate your explanation of the issue.

Somewhere in the U.S., there’s a scientist staring at their NSF/NIH grant application wondering why they bother. This post is for you. Science and society both need you. Hang in there and know there is a whole community supporting you.

A great thread if you’re into visualization for model interpretability and Bayesian stats!

I would like to know more about this too because it seems like this is how most people use posterior samples in practice.

Ah, thanks! It’s not at all clear that that icon is a toggle button and not just some shiny logo put there to taunt you.

Guarding our creative authenticity against the proliferation of trite AI slop will be a massive humanist project for the coming years.

On principle, I don’t want AI assistance on because I don’t want there to be any mistaking the provenance of my words and ideas. If you read my writing, have no doubt that I wrote every word with intention.

Anyone know how to turn off the AI assistance feature in Overleaf? I didn’t want this. I didn’t consent to this. I find the suggestions distracting in a way that basically makes the tool unusable for deep work. Am I alone in feeling this way?

Thanks for pointing this out.

What the fuck?! I missed the part about needing permission to publish papers funded by the department of ed. Madness. I’m working on a project funded by them, and hell if I’m going to have my research censored by these fascists.

Not to mention all other forms of cruelty on the retribution tour, many of which target populations that are much more vulnerable.

This is so upsetting. I have two grants out for review, basically my whole summer worth of effort scuttled. Multiply this by thousands of scientists whose time and ideas are being thrown away. It’s especially concerning for early career researchers whose futures depend on securing funding.

I’m feeling for the researchers who are losing access to funding.

“Universal fruitstuff magnitudes” is now a term of art

Professors, don't be mean to job candidates, they remember it the rest of their lives. Source: remembered it the rest of my life.

World Airports Voronoi The major airports of the world and their closest regions.

📊 #dataviz #map Very cool interactive Voronoi diagram tessellation of the globe partitioned by nearest major airport

www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi...

Map of CTA L station ridership by change in total ridership in October 2024 compared to 2019 with Morgan station served by Pink and Green L having 12% higher ridership than in 2019, and Oak-Park Congress having the lowest with a 65 decline in ridership since 2019

L Station ridership in October compared to pre-pandemic levels, the Forest Park branch is doing abysmal but it's great to see the West Loop boom leading to robust ridership growth for Morgan station

Just because I keep seeing the "replications show which effects are real" or "effects that didn't replicate once are flukes" heuristics repeatedly showing up on my TL today, I'm re-upping this thread. I beg everyone to please stop searching for quick and conclusive judgments on what's "true".

Imagine having such tremendous resources at your disposal and making this a priority.

Tonight over dinner my Dad exclaimed that there’s nothing he hates more than academics bragging and fishing for complements. I agree it’s gross.

Idk about a concrete resolution. I usually pick a value to orient towards for the year. This year it’s moving slow and steady in things that matter to me and trying my best to ignore everything else that distracts from or co-opts my objectives (which was a huge occupational hazard for me last year).