Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 3d

One year of this relentless ball of energy

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 4d

Made it to four gallons total as a blood donor today

Snoopy eating cookies with the text “give blood get cookies”

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Reposted by Isaac Baumann

Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 5d

R-Universe by @rOpenSci is an extremely useful project.

My latest R package, {pmtiles}, is not a good fit for CRAN as it bundles a pre-compiled Go library.

With R-Universe, I was able to get installable cross-platform binaries built in hours!

#rstats

walkerke.r-universe....

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 4d

My hottest and most unsolicited PTA take is that Phantom Thread is one of the very best movies of the 21st century and The Master should be ranked in the bottom half of his feature filmography, Philip Seymour Hoffman notwithstanding, and I will not elaborate on this

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Reposted by Isaac Baumann

Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 7d

"Many people still have an elderly relative who survived a bout of severe childhood illness; not one of us has an elderly relative who did not."

This is the best and perhaps most important illustration of sample selection i have seen in a good long while.

Trevon Logan @trevondlogan.bsky.social · 9d

Good history helps us avoid nostalgia. The great article “Economic History and the Historians” (2020) by Anne McCants reminds me why nostalgia can get us in trouble. Two of her examples are very relevant to today: vaccinations and the popular narrative of some economic “good old days.”

Getting vaccinated is unpleasant. Dying of measles is worse. In the decade before the 1963 vaccine for measles emerged, an average of 475 Americans died from measles every year, most of them children. This (absolute) number had dropped to a low of 1 in 1981, despite a steadily increasing population that might have hypothetically contributed additional cases. Sadly, the number of measles cases in the United States has been steadily climbing upward again because we seem not to remember the ravages of the disease so much as the inconvenience of the shot—even without taking into account the absurd rejection of the solid scientific evidence in favor of vaccinations. Many people still have an elderly relative who survived a bout of severe childhood illness; not one of us has an elderly relative who did not. The blurring of the historical evidence for and against vaccination that arises from strangely incongruous historical narratives allows a seemingly inconsequential but nonetheless deadly nostalgia to run rampant.

Another example of dangerous reverence for the past concerns the flurry of popular enthusiasm lately (at least if the pundits of the 2016 American election are to be believed) for the “good old days” of the 1950s when a family could live securely on just one income (in these nostalgic accounts, that one income is usually a man’s). Lest we forget, these are the same good old days of poor air quality and measles. Maybe trivial in comparison but certainly indicative of the scope of the cognitive problem that nostalgia presents, the average size of a new home built in America in 1950 was 983 sq. ft.; by 2010, the average size had risen to 2,392 sq. ft. Given that families were larger on average in the 1950s than they were in 2010, per capita space allocation had risen even faster than total area. Although we might not need that much personal space, many of us have become used to it. Older furniture now looks tiny compared to what is now on offer in showrooms, whereas older television sets were behemoths with miniscule screens showing programs in glorious black and white.

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 10d

Now we tune into today’s installment of Seen From The Metra Train

A car at a railroad crossing that’s had the crossing bar come down on top of it

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 15d

I’m pretty close to putting “arrow forward or swipe to navigate” instructions on the first slide of my HTML decks because it’s something that just keeps coming up. A small price to pay for version control, though.

Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 15d

Still a thousand times better than the version control nightmare that is uploading content to an LMS

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 15d

Making simple, seemingly easily navigable, and accessible class pages is such a fun self-inflicted foray into “UX is my passion/UX is my burden” territory

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 16d

Madison, summer

#35mm #filmphotography

The Wisconsin state capitol framed by tree silhouettes

A mural on a building with a sandhill crane and a butterfly on a white, blue, and yellow pattern. Two concrete and brick buildings are in the foreground on either side of the building with the mural.

An art deco office building in front of a lake

The front of the Orpheum theater with a marquee sign reading “stay cool Madison.” A skateboarder skates by on the street in front of the theater.

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 17d

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baileys...

Baileys Harbor Range Lights - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 17d

Baileys harbor range lights, Door County WI

#35mm #filmphotography

A short, very angular red and white lighthouse in between trees under a cloudy sky

The front of an old white and red house with. A walkway leads to the front door with a flagpole on the left flying a US flag. On the top of the house is a window with a light.

A view looking down a wooden boardwalk from the top of the white and red house. The boardwalk is surrounded by trees on either side. At the end of the boardwalk is the small lighthouse.

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 19d

New camera day
#filmphotography

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 20d

I just contacted my reps and you should, too. There’s a helpful script in the thread to use or work off of.

emily moonlight @threnody.bsky.social · 22d

hi, cis folks!

trans people need your help! the FY26 budget gets a vote by 9/30. GOP wants a ban on funds for ALL health services that provide trans care for ANY AGE. they're trying for other bans, too.

we need you to call senators like chuck who don't get it: reps.fyi

info & script in the🧵⬇️

SEC. 243. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to implement, administer, or enforce Executive Order 13988, entitled ‘‘Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation’’, published by the Executive Office of the President on January 25, 2021 (86 Fed. Reg. 7023).

SEC. 244. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used for any social, psychological, behavioral,or medical intervention performed for the purposes of in16 tentionally changing the body of an individual (including by disrupting the body’s development, inhibiting its natural functions, or modifying its appearance) to no longer correspond to the individual’s biological sex.

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 22d

Keeping my eyes peeled today for the first article eulogizing Robert Redford as a beloved actor known for his MCU appearances

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 24d

He saw somebody using setwd() instead of opening an RStudio project

The Kansas City Star @kansascity.com · 24d

Fans were unsure why Travis Kelce was so upset after the Chiefs scored a touchdown against the Eagles on Sunday.

An angry Travis Kelce threw his helmet to the ground after Chiefs’ first TD

Fans were unsure why Travis Kelce was so upset after the Chiefs scored a touchdown against the Eagles on Sunday.

bit.ly

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 24d

Pumpkin spice flavored cheese wedges, on sale for 20% off

The Jeff Goldblum “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn’t stop to think if they should” scene

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 25d

This is so cool. I used to go cycling on the Dockweiler Beach path just past the end of the LAX runways after work sometimes and having A380s taking off directly above you was genuinely kinda unsettling. They take off so, so much lower than other planes.

Jason Rabinowitz @airlineflyer.net · 25d

The main #CrankyDorkfest attraction may have shifted over by one runway this year, but being this close under an A380 is still absolutely awesome. #AvGeek

Reposted by Isaac Baumann

Thomas Lin Pedersen @thomasp85.com · 27d

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

ggplot2 4.0.0

A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.

www.tidyverse.org

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 27d

Andrés Segovia's been one of my go-tos for a while

Etude in B-Flat Minor, Op. 29 No. 13

YouTube video by Andrés Segovia - Topic

www.youtube.com

Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · 29d

I'm a few hours late, but tonight's Monday Night Football jet flyover brought to you by Madison, WI

A map showing an ADS-B flight path for a jet flying from Madison, WI, to Chicago, IL, and then returning to Madison, WI

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · Sep 8

Ever needed an academic website template for a project, lab, etc. in Quarto or MyST with flexibility for university branding? Check out mine and @mariaoros.bsky.social’s templates for publishing and reproducing open source survey results at @uwdsi.bsky.social

Maria Jaen @mariaoros.bsky.social · Sep 8

This site is a companion to the excellent work of my colleague @ibaumann, who developed the Quarto (R) version of our Open Source Survey results. Building on that effort, we now also provide a MyST (Python) version. Together, we make the survey results accessible to both R and Python communities.

Perceptions — Open Source Survey Results

uw-madison-dsi.github.io

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Reposted by Isaac Baumann

Institute for Research on Poverty @irpwisc.bsky.social · Sep 4

📣 IRP is growing our Data Science team with 3 new positions! Learn more about this excellent opportunity and apply by 9/17/25: jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/irp-dat...

IRP Data Scientist I (3 Positions)

Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process. Job Category: Academic Staff Employment…

wisconsin.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

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Reposted by Isaac Baumann

Kyle Cranmer @kylecranmer.bsky.social · Sep 4

That’s better! Got the George Box poster up at the DSI @uwdsi.bsky.social

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Isaac Baumann @ibaumann.bsky.social · Sep 4

Stickers? 👀