dataanxiety

[dataanxiety]

Ah yes, another time and motion problem... tempus fugit

@uququ

[dataanxiety]

How the U.S. Found Saddam Hussein

Saddam was captured, but the Iraq war didn't end. Coalition forces had no exit strategy once Hussein's reign ended. Why not?

[dataanxiety]

These multilateral foreign trade deals have been hurting us for a long time. It isn't going to be easy or quick to get our country and manufacturing back. It is worth the effort.

Several Facts about American Foreign Trade

- The last time the United States had a trade surplus was 1975.

- The United States has had a growing trade deficit with China since 1985, and its largest trade deficits are with Asian nations.

- According to government data, since the start of free trade agreements with NAFTA in 1992, America’s trade deficit rose from 39.2 billion dollars to 559.8 billion in 2011, or an increase of over 1428 percent. The increase in this deficit was caused by the outsourcing of jobs, and the exploitation of unregulated environments and labor overseas.

- According to government data, before the start of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, the United States had trade surpluses with most nations involved. Now the United States has trade deficits with most.

- A 2011 opinion poll showed the American public has moved from “broad opposition” to “overwhelming opposition” toward NAFTA-style trade deals. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll from September 2010 revealed that “the impact of trade and outsourcing is one of the only issues on which Americans of different classes, occupations and political persuasions agree” with 86% believing that outsourcing jobs “a top cause of our economic woes,” and 69% indicating that “free trade agreements between the United States and other countries cost the U.S. jobs.” Only 17% of Americans in 2010 felt that “free trade agreements” benefit the U.S., compared to 28% in 2007.

[dataanxiety]

[dataanxiety]

in honor of Pesach, Jochebed, her daughter Miriam, her son Moses, and the Egyptian princess; and in appreciation of the works of Malana Shahin Shirazi (1327 A.D.)

Mūsā Nāma (The Book of Moses) by Mulana Shāhīn Shirazi

Scribe: Nehemiah ben Amshal of Tabriz

Tabriz, Persia, 1686

Handwritten on paper; black ink, tempera, and gold powder; square and semi-cursive Oriental script

Mūsā Nāma is a poetic compilation of the biblical books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, written in Judaeo-Persian in 1327 by Mulana Shāhīn Shirazi, the most prominent Jewish poet of medieval Persia. Melding Jewish, Muslim, and Persian legends, his text presents the main episodes in the life of Moses. Some of the nineteen miniatures in this rare copy reflect the influence of Muslim interpretation and visual tradition, such as the veiled depiction of Moses’ face, which recalls representations of Muhammad and Muslim saints.

[dataanxiety]

via FOCUS: Complexity and the failure of quantitative social science 

Is this just so much woo? The following is supposedly the wrong paradigm: 

the history of statistics in the social sciences is one of great achievement but also error; and the basis for both is the belief that disorganized complexity constitutes the major challenge to social scientific inquiry.

Disorganized complexity 

It seems more than adequately daunting, no? If the results make sense and the analysis is tractable, the conventional quantitative program in the social sciences is approached as follows: 

social reality is a form of disorganized complexity, which is best handled using the tools of statistics; 

the goal is to explain majority, aggregate behavior in terms of probability theory and the macroscopic laws of averages; 

to do so, one seeks to develop simple, variable-based linear models, in which variables are treated as ‘rigorously real’ measures of social reality; 

model-in-hand, the goal is to identify, measure, describe and (hopefully) control or manage how certain independent variables impact one or more dependent variables of concern; 

and, if done right, these models lead to reasonably linear explanations of why things happen the way they do; 

which, in turn, leads to relatively straightforward policy recommendations for what to do about them.

Organized complexity less tractable than disorganized complexity?

But no! Social reality is a form of organized complexity which is much more difficult!  In order to do social science one needs to study and discuss (through college coursework): 

philosophy and sociology of science, post-positivism and pragmatism, feminism and feminist methodology, pragmatism and anti-positivism, critical realism and neo-pragmatism, ecofeminism and systems theory, social constructionism and social constructivism, 2nd order cybernetics and post-structuralism, qualitative method and historiography, ethnography and deconstructionism, actor-network theory and postmodernism.

To grapple with the complicated modern world of complex organized complexity, scholars must contend with a “data-saturated world of social problems far beyond the pale of conventional quantitative social science”. 

A revolution in computational methods

Over the past 30 years, this revolution in method contains some of the most highly innovative tools and techniques ever created, from geospatial modeling and complex network analysis to dynamical systems theory and nonlinear statistical mechanics to multi-agent modeling and artificial neural nets to cellular automata and data mining to data visualization and case-based modeling.

Hmm, okay, I guess. 

the common view amongst complexity scholars is that social reality and the data used to examine it are best understood, methodologically speaking, in organized complex systems terms.  In other words, social reality and data are best seen as self-organizing, emergent, nonlinear, evolving, dynamic, network-based, interdependent, qualitative and non-reductive.

So how do social scientists learn how to do this?  Recall that the message is “statistics isn’t enough”. The recommendation: 

it is not so much that the social sciences would need to be proficient in calculus, computational analysis, and nonlinear statistical mechanics!  Hardly. Instead, an open learning environment would need to be created, where students could be introduced to new and innovative notions of complexity, critical thinking, data visualization and modeling, as well as the challenges of mixed-methods, interdisciplinary teamwork, global complexity, and big data!

I think that is what people who do PhD level work in sociology do now. Interdisciplinary team work and critical thinking is nothing new. 

Finally, we get to what sounds like one of those impossible, ridiculous job descriptions, where the candidate should know everything: 

...while the overwhelming majority of physicists, mathematicians and computational scientists are incredible technicians and methodologists, most are not very good social scientists.  In turn, the overwhelming majority of social scientists are not very good technicians or methodologists.  And, both sides are at fault for not extending their reach, and both are foolish for not doing so.

LOL

Find me a physicist or mathematician who is also a good social scientist!  There are a few, e.g. Andrew Gelman, PhD in statistics from Harvard, and Columbia University professor of sociology. And even he doesn’t have great intuition or common sense despite being ahead of the rest, and technically excellent, or so political scientists say. Academia isn’t going to turn out thousands or even hundreds of Andrew Gelmans regardless of curriculum changes. 

Nice, colorful chart, but my verdict is woo. I would be delighted to be corrected though.

[dataanxiety]

via The Future of OA: A large-scale analysis projecting Open Access publication and readership (2019) 

In 2019, this analysis predicted the following in 2025,

44% of all journal articles will be available as Open Access

70% of all views will be to Open Access articles

As of 13 April 2025, the first bullet point seems too high to me. 

The second bullet point is probably more accurate.

[dataanxiety]

My favorite emojis

The standards authority for character encoding is the Unicode Consortium. Character encoding is necessary because computers only deal with numbers. Letters and other characters are stored by assigning a unique number for each of them. This includes emojis.

Unicode standards updated (too?) often

Unicode keeps removing or replacing emojis! The most current version of the standard is Unicode 16.0.0 (September 2024). To get a sense of how often the universe of available emojis can change, the Unicode standard was on version 9 as of April 2016. Seven major standards updates in eight years is a lot.

Unicode could keep emojis unchanged even though they updated other parts of the standard. There is a lot more that the Unicode Consortium does, besides maintaining emojis. That was a source of major annoyance to Unicode consortium members (that their work was often assumed to only about emojis) in the past and probably still is!

Loss of my favorite emojis

Many are gone now that I really liked! I miss the nuclear energy cooling tower and the princess crown and lots of others.

In this post, I'm trying to preserve some of my still extant favs. Even after Unicode deprecates an emoji, an existing use of it can be copy and pasted, and will continue to display correctly.

Many emoji don't render well on tumblr

These came out mostly okay although small. And some did lose their color.

🎼🏭🏗👑☢☣📠📟💳🏺⚗🚜

Can't say the same about these two!

🛞🕍

I'm not sure why some resolve as rectangles here but not on other websites or apps, given that I am using the same browser and operating system.

🏜🕴️‍♀️🌮🍮🌪💨🐧🐷🐏🐑🐖🐝🦨🦡🐗🦓🐞🐙

💔💕💞💓💗💖💘💝❤️‍🔥❤️‍🩹

👀👁🦷🤮🤢🥵😢😵‍💫😬

🫂

🗣🤤😔🥰

Also not sure what happened here!

Why did they grow so big?!

🫡

🥱🥺🙄

🫤

....then return to the normal size?

🤫🤭😤🌠📡💌📐📏✡🔯🕎⚛‼⁉❗❕❓🌀♾🎵🎶💬💭

These poor guys, the four suites of a deck of cards lost all their color and shrunk down to a even tinier size.

♠♣♥♦

EDIT

Looks like the size resolved itself to some extent. Maybe it was due to the tumblr editor? idk

[dataanxiety]

Demise of the Navajo Generating Station

This was a recent question on Quora, an online question and answer platform.  Can California go all electric vehicle, given rolling blackouts due to electricity poverty? Quora finally found a business model! Well, sort of: Quora CEO, co-founder, and first Facebook Chief Technology Officer, Adam D’Angelo, is using 15 years of accumulated Quora content to train his abysmal pet AI question and…

[dataanxiety]

Product reviews from the liquor store

Apparently, Myer's Dark Rum has been sold to a new distillery.

I take a sip and pour the rest into the sink

That sums up recent buyers' impressions of the once-well liked drink. These are the best of the worst reviews, courtesy of Total Wine & Spirits, a chain of liquor stores in the southwest, west and midwestern United States.

Total Wine started doing one-hour delivery during COVID-19 and never stopped, so what can I say? It's my go-to place for liquor... um, something like that, as they come to me. Sorry, there was a good pun in there but I resisted the impulse.

Molasses Cough Syrup with an Unpleasant Kick

Tried a 50ml bottle after reading the numerous positive reviews...instant regret... this drink is rough. Heavy molasses on the nose, followed by prominent alcohol vapors and nothing else. Hard on the tongue and artificial tasting.

I took screenshots of more of my favorite reviews. Hope the typeface is readable. If you click on them, they expand as they are images.

"Insulation on the conductors in a burning transformer" by drinker Champt321 gets the prize from me.

This next one, of burnt motor oil and winsome memories of the days past while vacationing on tropical islands, is good too.

Let's finish up with customer WannaBeJamaican who says,

Diageo sold the rights to Myers's and the new batches are so NOT Myers's (although they still charge the same price of course). Total Wine won't let me write the new distiller's name in this review. I wrote to the new distiller (because they say on the label they like to hear from their customers)... Fred Myers must be rolling in his grave!

His family must just love doing this for him:

I have my family scouring local liquor stores for Diageo Myers and they have found me about 15 Diageo bottles, but these won't last forever.

[dataanxiety]

Country Balls are back! 

This is very timely given Donald Trump’s sudden interest in Panama, especially about the canal that we built there a while back.

First, things weren’t going so well. Then we seem to have convinced the president of Panama that it wasn’t a great idea to have Chinese companies under contract to run BOTH sides of the canal. Then Trump wanted U.S. war ships (and maybe other U.S. ships?) to be given free passage through the canal. Panama said, “no”. 

I don’t know what will happen next.

[dataanxiety]

Tardigrade corn maze at Treinen Farm in Wisconsin.

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No, very, very good work, Strabo!

"Strabo of Amesia, active in the late first century BCE and early first century CE, wrote the longest surviving geography in Greek literature.

Strabo was amazing, given that he was born around 40 BC!

"The Geography of Strabo is the only surviving work of its type, and the major source for the history of Greek scholarship on geography. . . In addition, this lengthy and complex work [includes information on] the journey of Alexander the Great, the history of the eastern Mediterranean in the first century BC, and women's history. Modern knowledge of seminal geographical authors such as Eratosthenes relies almost totally on Strabo."

He made some other maps, which I found impressive as well.

Ancient Greek geographer Strabo’s map of the known world.

[dataanxiety]

Muzzle Number 1

This isn't one of those blurry live performances that are the bane of YouTube. The video might have been recorded at a performance, but the sound quality is great.

“I'm moving for no one. Start moving for me! You can't say what I'm doing, You're not the boss of me! No fooling around now. I'm free of shackles and chains. No more strings attached 'round here, It's time to take a hold of the reins. I was speaking out in silence, But no one ever heard! Nothing more than whispers, cause you're... Getting in the way, Getting in the way, getting in the way. I'm standing my ground now. I keep up my defense. My own two feet on the level field, Instead of sitting on the fence. Don't wanna hear voices, Spinning round my head. You can't tell me what to do now no more! I'm keeping it to myself. Well, I was backed into my corner, But no one ever saw. Dreams on hold, you pinched them, woke me up, Getting in the way. Drop the leash, I've been released. I'm moving for no one. The lights have started shining on in! I'm not giving an inch anymore, 'Cause the chances are so slim. Hold my head up high now. I blow smoke in your eyes. Your vision's a blur and a kiss, You're Muzzle #1 Getting in the way, getting in the way Getting in the way, getting in the way Drop the leash, I've been released, I've been released.”

Southern Fried Records

From their YouTube channel:

...timeless label founded by Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, and Garry Blackburn in 1994. The Whip is hitting its 500th release this year with a brand new single from Fatboy Slim.

[dataanxiety]

This is why the gig economy e.g. Uber, Airbnb, have always made me feel so depressed.

Everything doesn't need to be done as a service.

[dataanxiety]

Someone takes beautiful notes and does their mathematical statistics (actually probability I think) very well.

Dawg I am so tired

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Looking back, a bit sadly...

*It's 1995, and maybe I can buy some books from the Internet and become better-informed