By the way, there is a name for this - they are called "aptonyms" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym
By the way, there is a name for this - they are called "aptonyms" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym
This is an EXCELLENT piece that captures much of what I'm seeing and feeling in the AI space right now. Highly recommended that you read the whole thing: shumer.dev/something-bi...
Drake Maye shall never vanquish'd be until / Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him
Thank you! One of the motivations for making this was actually for the data driven campaigns class I teach.
Solar panels & a boat in the driveway...is this a Harris or Trump neighborhood?
π³οΈ Ballot Blocks #13 - 3/7
βπΆβ
Play at ballotblocks.com
Thank you! Glad you enjoy it!!
Thanks! Yellow means youβve got the correct winner but wrong margin.
That's so great to hear - thank you!
I did - thanks! Me and Claude Code over the weekend. Absolutely mind-boggling experience.
Ballot Blocks
π³οΈ Ballot Blocks #12 - 3/7
βπΆβ
Play at ballotblocks.com
A childrenβs phonics packet titled βai wordsβ
Seems a little young to be teaching parameters, tokens, and quantizationβ¦
This chart, from Ben Fritzβs excellent WSJ article on Marvel today, tells a hell of a storyβ¦
More intermissions please! This is the (re)innovation that the movie theatre experience needs.
And we thought cell phones at the theater are badβ¦
Does it bug you as much as it bugs me that the shortest day of the year doesn't also have the latest sunrise and earliest sunset? I don't like that asymmetry...so I made a dataviz to help me better understand it and maybe see the underlying pattern better. π #dataviz
Apparently every holiday season student volunteers at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana run a 24-hour "Dial-A-Carol" hotline. A student volunteer will sing a carol of your choice! Try it - tonight is the last night! 217-332-1882
Dick Van Dyke is one of the all time greats, and it's absolutely beautiful to see him get his flowers in this video by Coldplay and Spike Jonze:
An animated worm face with big bulging eyes taken from the Earworm Eraser video.
"The Earworm Eraser is a 40-second audio track designed specifically to squash earworms β a song on repeat circling around and around in your brain that can't easily be shaken off."
All I want for Christmas is ... help getting this song out of my head: www.npr.org/2024/11/27/n...
βThe Hikeβ by Drew Magary: This is what you would get if Guillermo Del Toro rewrote βThe Wizard of Ozβ with a middle aged male protagonist. An engaging breezy read that gave me some super weird dreams and got me wondering if I had successfully gotten myself off of my own βpathβ. 4/5βοΈ
βThe Kaiju Preservation Societyβ by John Scalzi. This book is pure bubble-gum sci-fi in the best possible way. So much fun. Iβm sure the movie rights have already sold; what an incredible addition this would be to the Godzilla-verse! 4/5βοΈ
This is SO good. Worked really beautifully on mobile too.
AI playlist chat showing what I asked for.
Spotify playlist with a Beatles song, Otis Redding, Jim Croce
Finally tried the Spotify AI playlist generator. It did not do well. First ask? Songs that are like the Beatles that arenβt by the Beatles. It gave me a list entirely of Beatles songs. After revision I asked it to only give me songs recorded after 2000. It failed.
Cover of the book Nexus shows a pigeon.
Also just finished βNexusβ by Yuval Harari. Not the tour de force of Sapiens or Homo Deus, but an important big picture look at AI. I have a ton of thoughts to put in longer form, but until then know this is a worthwhile βbig thinkβ book if youβre at all interested in our AI driven future. 4/5 βοΈ
Cover of the novel The Afterlives by Thomas Pierce. A dog inside a yellow frame.
Just finished The Afterlives by Thomas Pierce, a sweet reflection on life, death, and the potentially soft barrier between them wrapped up in a cozy haunted house story. 3/5 βοΈ
Yeah, I recently installed Ollama and have been experimenting with pal, mall, ollamar. It's really incredible where all this is headed.
Two fantastic small music venues in DC - The Pocket and Rhizome - have been awarded a "Toolbox Grant" from the Live Music Society. Well deserved - congratulations! www.livemusicsociety.org/news/live-mu...
3 songs in and Father John Mistyβs new album is EXCELLENT. Those strings on βJosh Tillman and the Accidental Doseβ? <chefs kiss>
This is great - will be useful for the peer review component of my dataviz course. π
"Consistent differences suggest that singing isnβt just a by-product of speech, yet why it evolved is still unknown. Perhaps it developed to unite people, an idea called the social-bonding hypothesis."
Hidden Patterns in Folk Songs Reveal How Music Evolved:
π that 18-29 year old number - nearly half!!