john mitchell 
@daeyoung@qoto.org
Digital nomad | Statistics | Clean energy | Politically homeless 🏳️🌈🇺🇸🇰🇷
I'm a statistician specializing in Bayesian inference and statistical computing. I like to keep my professional life separate from my online activities, so that's pretty much all you're gonna get from me.
All views are my own
Joined Nov 2022
@DotardTed What is this comma thousands separator insanity
john mitchell
boosted
boosted
Me, writing work emails after reading #JaneAusten:
“My dear Dr. Dashwood—
I trust that you and your graduate students remain in good health. Praise for your latest article is on everyone’s lips. I have not the smallest wish to vex you, but circumstances compel me to trouble you for a meeting. There is not a moment to be lost. I flatter myself that you will endeavour to fill out this Whenisgood poll before Michaelmas.
Until then I remain,
Your humble servant— S.” 🪶
Asymptotics-pilled statisticians definitely bamboozled every generation of statistics acolytes to forget about finite-sample properties, because nobody in my life has every told me the linear-regression prediction interval undercovers because the sample SD underestimates the population SD, which is not even advanced statistics. It's just simple Jensen's inequality 😭😭
Seriously, someone's gotta write a "explaining conformal inference" paper and submit it to #TheAmericanStatistician for the rest of us.
john mitchell
boosted
boosted
So someone messaged me privately and asked how absolute this is.. like would we block an instance calling for genocide. I feel my response is import to reiterate here, so here it is:
Its not just about the authorities, it is about the people whose lives are at risk by that call to genocide having the right to see those posts and use that information to look out for their own safety... If someone is doxed, they should know, if someone is threatened, they should know, and they should be able to take action.
Someone saying violent things online doesnt guarantee some police officer will meander by and take them down. The law only tends to get involved once someone is reported, and sometimes not even then. No one will be reporting a site if no one can see or know it is there.
The question is, if someone is being physically threatened and having their life in jeopardy how are you helping them by blocking the privileges of the **victim** and disallowing the victim the right to see the threat placed against them?
In short, I refuse to take away rights from the victim simply because there is a violent bad actor out there. If the victim doesn't want to see it they simply need to import the block list and the problem is solved for them, so why not keep the power in the victims hands?
🇳🇱
@freemo@qoto.org
I mentioned this in a private message to someone recently about why a small handful of servers block qoto. I wanted to reiterate it here for the ne...
@Pat I have yet to make up my mind which side I’m on regarding this issue. Not all politics is about civics—sometimes it’s literally mudslinging between 2 people. At the same time, another part of me thinks the responsibility to filter out unwanted content should be on the person who doesn’t want to see stuff. It’s condescending to take away agency from neuro-atypical users. Idk if I’m being contrarian tho
john mitchell
boosted
boosted
CW - "Mastodon Culture"
I'd like to share another thought on the CW after encountering a few more thoughts on it.
Most civil instances encourage it's use, when the poster thinks they may be sharing something a little heavy for relative strangers to approach.
There's a flip side, though. Some people don't use it because they are here to be their whole selves. Out, trans, neurodivergent, living with mental or chronic illness, whatever.
1/2
@Pat also, why did you screenshot my toot instead of quoting it or replying to it? I appreciate different opinions (although i don’t think our opinions are that different) but if you screenshot it, I don’t get the push alert
Thoughts on CW
Some thoughts about toots recommending/demanding the use of CWs.
There will be some who whole-heartedly agree with the idea of using CWs for posts conventionally not concealed behind CWs. Some—like me—will be indifferent but not opposed to using it. And there will also be some who feel like they're being forced to use it.
If you really want to persuade the latter two groups to use CWs more broadly than they're willing to, "this is the way it has been and how it always should be, so take it or leave it" attitude won't work. It borders on guilt-tripping them by saying "you are inconsiderate and insensitive and lack empathy if you don't use CWs." Also, I'm skeptical there's (and will ever be) a bright-line rule as to what makes for a triggering post—it's inherently subjective. Where do we draw the line?
That said, we need to present gains and benefits of CW that apply to those people as well. Personally, I like CW because I tend to want to have a rough sense of what I'm about to read—like a table of contents. What do you like about CWs other than hiding triggering content?
@ProfKinyon are you telling me you normally don’t use Oxford commas? 🤨
@reallyedbrown I meant pugs. Goddamnit autocorrect
@reallyedbrown are chihuahuas uglier than pigs? It’s a race too close to call
john mitchell
boosted
boosted
Today I learned that the main developer for mastodon is trans. That explains a lot!
@louiscouture oh yeah, there are lots of restrictions on the EV tax credit. Single households earning over 150k are ineligible for EV tax credit and new battery EVs that cost more than 55k are also out.
Also, I think it’s important to mention EV tax credit is not designed to be poverty relief. To optimize on the environmental effect, we need to boost those who can actually afford EVs, which inevitably concentrated on people who aren’t terribly poor but also not rich enough to purchase one on their own. From a policy perspective, I think the IRA is one of the exceptionally well designed bills
@kathygriffin Imgur + link share
@louiscouture expanding more on this point, it also further discourages people from living in areas with public transportation
@louiscouture the only cities covered by public transportation are NYC, Washington DC, and Chicago. And the ones who can afford living there and own a car at the same time are already ineligible for EV subsidy
john mitchell
boosted
boosted
🏳️🌈
Things I would like to see enacted by the new US Congress Senate
Healthcare :
ban certificate of need laws
Price transparency reform
Environnement
:
Cap and trade system
Cut ev subsidies for people living in areas covered by public transit.
Social :
You need an ID to vote everywhere
Marijuanna decriminalization
@rataflechera imagine that’s your bedroom
Digital nomad | Statistics | Clean energy | Politically homeless 🏳️🌈🇺🇸🇰🇷
I'm a statistician specializing in Bayesian inference and statistical computing. I like to keep my professional life separate from my online activities, so that's pretty much all you're gonna get from me.
All views are my own
Joined Nov 2022
