free countries have gdp data line up well. partly free countries are only mediocre. not free countries are bad.
Here’s a graph from the Economist showing GDP data from official government sources versus private estimates.
Free countries, like the US, don’t manipulate econ data. Less free countries do. Trump is seeking to break that for short-term PR.
(Yes I know GDP is BEA and not BLS.)
Consider the possibility that work life balance is not just a preferred lifestyle but necessary to allow people to raise the next generation of the human race. The alternative is a dropping birth rate and/or a stay at home parent in every household.
stocks.apple.com/AKQokfrDGRO2...
At this moment two weeks ago, I was picking my son up from a great week of sleepaway camp in the mountains. The situation for parents of the missing campers in Texas is just unspeakably heartbreaking.
Yes!!! I’ve had a lot of good professional experiences but if I had to choose one best thing it would be the attitude of the R community that I was lucky enough to become a part of 20 years ago ❤️ The world will be a better place if we can spread this to other things!
Also, the idea of an “admin party” is really great.
I subscribed to @theatlantic.com in the last year, and it has been an unsuspected joy. What a wonderful publication. Not just news and politics, but all manner of things like this article. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
dplyr.tidyverse.org, tidyr.tidyverse.org, and ggplot2.tidyverse.org now have an experimental "ask AI" button powered by kapa.ai. It uses the contents of all 3 sites to (hopefully!) better answer your tidyverse questions. This is very much an experiment so please let me know what you think! #rstats
Yes! One of the things I most appreciated about Roy Cooper when he was governor of NC is that I almost never had to think about him. He seemed focused on being competent at his job and steered us on a good path while being delightfully boring about it!!
There’s really an impressive amount in this particular newsletter
I wouldn't snooze on this opportunity #databs
My attempts to grow even nominal amounts of vegetables have given me great respect for farmers. Some years one thing does great and the rest suffer some tragedy incompatible with production. Next year totally different 🤯 It’s more an exercise in cultivating humility than vegetables.
Does anyone have examples of collaborating with non-coders (scientists in my case) on #Quarto documents? Tips to share? I can imagine the visual editor working well for them, it’s the Github part that seems like a big ask.
Looks similarly bad for Chapel Hill NC
Over the weekend, I showed Claude Code my data-oriented web app and asked how it would build the same thing from scratch. It decided to mock up the data even though the data files were there, because it couldn’t get around CORS (honestly something I didn’t know existed until recently).
What are the key characteristics to qualify as a real time database?
I’m hiring for a Senior Data Scientist / Data Developer role at EvE Bio, a non-profit! It requires substantial #rstats experience, including #Shiny.
It’s a hybrid role located in Durham, NC.
If you are interested and qualified, please apply or reach out to me w Qs.
jobs.lever.co/convergentre...
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Bind Research, the UK’s first not-for-profit Focused Research Organisation, with long-term support from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Research Ventures Catalyst Programme, industry, and charities.
We just published a deep look into E11 Bio, the research nonprofit creating tools to build a 3D map of every neuron and synapse in a brain.
Jump in to learn how their technology could map an entire mouse brain in 5 years for $100 million—a 100x improvement over existing methods.
If only Observable plot had a functional facet_wrap equivalent 😞
Phenomenal article by Lina Khan reminding us why breaking up monopolies isn’t about fairness, it’s about competitiveness!
www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/o...
This thread is reassuring since I recently decided for our public data release to go with zipped csvs. I felt a little guilty for not using parquet but decided it could only be a barrier to some people (scientists) who wouldn’t know how to open it.
There are some marked state effects here. I’m curious why NC is so high even here in the central Piedmont region where we seem to be quite fortunate from a weather disaster standpoint. Maybe a state govt factor at play?
Keeping and maintaining code and pipelines that provide open datasets for free, is not free.
Excited to see initiatives like this gaining support of their communities!
Whenever I see people doing complicated things in Excel I am both impressed and horrified.
I am very excited to try this out. More assistance writing tests is one of things I’d most like AI to provide!
The interesting question would be how this compares to reality — like, how often is college likely to be worth it. Loan or not, there’s an opportunity cost to the money and time spent. I remember a thought provoking podcast on this - I’m pretty sure it was this one: youtu.be/dmP8YMV4ps0?...
Working on it now!
It’s great to see how this kind of tool can empower a subject matter expert who knows some R and Shiny but only codes intermittently to make something that solves a problem for their team — without getting stuck on lots of details they would struggle to sort out.
First experience with #Shiny assistant today was good! A scientist I work with who also has some R skills got a basic app working, then Shiny assistant did the tricky part of making it possible for the user to advance through a series of plots, something I would have struggled to figure out myself.
