Rare sighting of a column chart taking a dip at Hove Beach.

#dataviz

Yah, have been thinking about this example, too. Even in the US, it’s ludicrous (and dangerous) for consumers to be driving monster trucks in regular traffic.

Built to last bsky.app/profile/owas...

The current protectionist policies are that, indirectly.

Keep on Truckin’ bsky.app/profile/owas...

bsky.app/profile/owas...

What could go wrong? bsky.app/profile/owas...

Years ago read about how the Japanese cell phone industry developed features and standards that could only sell to the local market, dubbed “Galapagos syndrome.”

Unless there’s a dramatic turnaround, seems likely that poor leadership and bad policy are driving US auto industry toward the same fate.

And, yes, give yourself permission to write a shitty first draft bsky.app/profile/autu...

The reading is in the writing.

The writing is in the revising.

IJ lawyer really upping the ante on puns!

Sliver of the surveillance video bsky.app/profile/heat...

They dressed like a bear and damaged a Rolls-Royce in an audacious insurance scheme A fraud scheme involving wearing bear costumes across Southern California has ended in jail time for three people, according to authorities.

What about their Second Amendment rights? www.latimes.com/california/s...

Thundercat talks about his new album, 'Distracted' The bass player known as Thundercat is cherished by fans of funk and jazz, and he recently revealed his love of "yacht rock" in a popular documentary. His new album is called "Distracted."

“truth without compassion is just cruelty” www.npr.org/2026/04/16/n...

A bear suit laid out on a wooden floor, complete with claws, is part of the evidence that has been used to convict three individuals for staged “bear” attacks on luxury cars for insurance payouts. (California Department of Insurance)

“In November 2024, detectives executed a search and arrest warrant at the defendants’ home and discovered a head-to-claw bear costume and meat shredders they say were used in the scheme.” www.latimes.com/california/s...

They dressed like a bear and damaged a Rolls-Royce in an audacious insurance scheme A fraud scheme involving wearing bear costumes across Southern California has ended in jail time for three people, according to authorities.

“In an attempt to bolster their story, they even submitted a video of the incident—but it ultimately would be their undoing. Video of the attack shows what appears to be, to the casual observer, at least, a person in a brown bear costume entering a car and rummaging around and pawing at the inside.”

Couldn't help myself

They dressed like a bear and damaged a Rolls-Royce in an audacious insurance scheme A fraud scheme involving wearing bear costumes across Southern California has ended in jail time for three people, according to authorities.

What about their Second Amendment rights? www.latimes.com/california/s...

The FBI Director Is MIA Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.

Kash Patel is drunk a lot and jumps to conclusions without evidence and is terrified he’s about to get fired — wild, wild story here from The Atlantic
www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

“Since the pollster began asking, the lowest number of Americans that have ever said they like the president personally is 26%, which has been achieved only three times: in the wake of January 6, 2021, in January of 2024, and in March of this year.”

🚨 I have an article out at APR titled “Educational Polarization in American Politics: More than Just a Diploma Divide” in which i look at how educational attainment shapes public opinion and political behavior across the entire education spectrum, not just the across the degree/no degree binary 1/x

11. Which one of the following episodes in American history took the most courage?...The passengers of Flight 93 stopping the hijackers on September 11th (2001, the date of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon), Harriet Tubman helping escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad, Martin Luther King marching at Selma, the Founders signing the Declaration of Independence, John F. Kennedy holding steady during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Jonas Salk testing the polio vaccine on himself 29% The passengers of Flight 93 stopping the hijackers on September 11th 21% Harriet Tubman helping escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad 16% Martin Luther King marching at Selma 13% The Founders signing the Declaration of Independence 10% John F. Kennedy holding steady during the Cuban Missile Crisis 6% Jonas Salk testing the polio vaccine on himself 4% Don't know/No answer Survey Information Survey Organization: CBS News Survey Sponsor: 60 Minutes; Vanity Fair Study Date: November 5, 2014 - November 9, 2014 Sample: National adult Sample Size: 1018 Geographic Coverage: United States Interview Mode: Telephone Interview

🤔

Almost every city that boomed after the car grew outward, as if hit with a centrifugal force.

I wonder if newer cities that grow after the mass adoption of e-bikes will return to urban density under a countervailing, centripetal force.

Jury Finds Live Nation Acts as a Monopoly in a Victory for States

“Live Nation argued that Ticketmaster wins business because it is the best ticketing service, not because venues are threatened. But at one point, jurors were shown internal data that indicated fan satisfaction with Ticketmaster had dropped from 18 percent in 2021 to 1 percent in 2023.” Gift link:

A happy update: My job market paper is now accepted at the Journal of Labor Economics. Since I never did a proper thread on it, here goes.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper are solely my own and do not reflect those of my employer, NYC IBO.)

Elegance is its own reward

Your Glasses Got Worse On Purpose How an Italian orphan built a $27 billion monopoly that controls the brands, the stores, the lenses, and the insurance.

“Del Vecchio understood something that would fuel the next thirty years of expansion: if you put a fashion label on a medical device, people will pay twenty times what it costs to make.” www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-glass... HT @nextdoorsv.bsky.social

Your Glasses Got Worse On Purpose How an Italian orphan built a $27 billion monopoly that controls the brands, the stores, the lenses, and the insurance.

“Del Vecchio understood something that would fuel the next thirty years of expansion: if you put a fashion label on a medical device, people will pay twenty times what it costs to make.” www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-glass... HT @nextdoorsv.bsky.social

“Alongside a series of surveys published in recent years, these data suggest that there is currently no young cohort within the general U.S. population that can be said to view Israel positively.”

An interactive OJS playground demonstrating a linear congruential generator (LCG) using the formula X_n = (aX_{n-1} + c) mod m. Controls on the left set modulus (m=8), multiplier (a=5), increment (c=3), seed (X_0=1), and numbers to generate (12). A table on the right shows the resulting sequence of X values, intermediate calculations, mod m results, and normalized values X_n/m, with the final "random" numbers highlighted in yellow.

Excerpt from the blog post with R code that tests all seeds from 1 to 10,000 to find which ones produce 10 heads in a row when simulating coin flips. The possible_seeds data frame is filtered to show 10 seeds (614, 1667, 3212, 4166, 4580, 5527, 5824, 7365, 7468, 8975) that meet this criterion. The post notes that seed 614 actually produces 13 heads in a row, confirmed with a withr::with_seed(614, ...) call below.

R console output demonstrating that set.seed(1234) produces reproducible results. The first block calls runif(5) and returns five values: 0.1137, 0.6223, 0.6093, 0.6234, 0.8609. The second block uses the same seed but splits the draw into runif(2) then runif(3), returning the same five values in the same order, showing that the sequence is preserved regardless of how many numbers are drawn at a time.

Table of contents for the post: Introduction Seeds and reproducible randomness My (somewhat incorrect) mental model of how seeds work Making “random” numbers with an equation Live interactive playground Cycles and fancier algorithms Why does it matter if “random” numbers aren’t actually random? You’re limiting yourself to narrow, known universes You can seed hack and get any values you want Real world bad things can happen because of pseudorandom numbers Can computers even create true randomness? Moving a mouse around Lava lamps Atmospheric noise How I use true randomness in my own work “…as an ook cometh of a litel spyr…”

I've been using random seeds for years but I have no idea how they work. Seeds somehow(?) make the same random numbers?

So I figured it out! New post includes an interactive PRNG generator, lava lamps, lottery fraud, @random.org, Chaucer, and Minecraft #rstats

www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2026/04...