Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Mike Mahoney

@mikemahoney218.com

3.1K followers 410 following 940 posts

Helped build NYS's Forest Carbon Assessment. Currently helping build public water data infrastructure. PhD in Environmental Science. #rstats, ML, Boston and spatial data. Opinions my own. RTs imply causation. https://mm218.dev github.com/mikemahoney218

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Reposted by Mike Mahoney

niki grayson @nikigrayson.com · 13h

the city of los angeles burned in january in part because of a man who couldn’t stop generating images of burning cities on ChatGPT, and then after he lit the fire he asked if the fire he started was his fault

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 2d

@ridebluebikes.bsky.social if y'all are taking feature requests....

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 2d

The Alhambra is unreal. Can't recommend enough.

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 3d

my partner finished his journey of visiting every blue bike station today (please clap)

unfortunately the app does NOT throw confetti when you hit 100%

A screenshot of the blue bikes app with 100% of stations visited

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 4d

Maine has a lot of gall talking about traffic when route 1 and Wiscasset exist

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 4d

my recent focus has been on a lot of point time series data -- I _think_ someone told me zarr handles this use case well enough, but honestly I've only seriously played with parquet so far

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 4d

hey spatial folks: if anyone has a great "parquet versus zarr" write-up, let me know. I'm never going to write a serializer but I'm really interested in the performance impacts of format for cloud downloads 👀

#geosky

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 5d

my most charitable opinion is that I also don't love that basically all software engineering currently requires using bespoke tooling and renting clock time from 1 of 3 corps

but that does mean that everyone everywhere needs tools for dealing with those corp's tech... not just the hyperscalers

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 6d

is this a typo in the Haymarket station artwork or is there a unit I haven't run into before

#boston

A black and white image of a storefront. Provolone and Acenelino are both labeled price per lb, while pecorino romano is labeled per bl

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 11d

this sent me down a rabbit hole and apparently table sugar is only 50% glucose

but now I'm really curious what the shape of the response function here is

Reposted by Mike Mahoney

our lady of the cow parsley @ladycowparsley.bsky.social · 18d

Hey @universalhub.com does this qualify as storrowing?

Jen Bendery @jbendery.bsky.social · 18d

Holy shit this big truck just got stuck under an overpass on Mass Ave in DC. I've never witnessed this before but thought about it a lot as a kid (lol).

You can't see it but there's a police car behind the truck under the bridge, diverting traffic to one lane.

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 19d

damn it's a pretty city

The Boston skyline as seen from the MGH platform

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 22d

that second one is absolutely Cuomo

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 27d

I'm not pretending to know the full MGL, I'm just reading the last sentence WBUR linked -- and you need 3000 signatures for the Boston mayoral preliminary election

Could be other laws they didn't link!

Section 13. A person nominated as a candidate for any state, city or town office may withdraw his name from nomination by a request signed and duly acknowledged by him before a notary public, and filed with the officer with whom the nomination was filed, within the time prescribed by section eleven for filing objections to certificates of nomination and nomination papers and no such requests for withdrawals shall be received after such time has expired. A person nominated at a city or town preliminary election may withdraw his name from nomination in the same manner, within six days succeeding five o'clock in the afternoon of the day of holding such preliminary election. Unless otherwise provided by the city or town charter, such nominee shall be replaced by the candidate with the next highest number of votes in said preliminary, if such candidate receives a number of votes at least equal to the number of signatures required by law to place his name on the preliminary election ballot.

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 27d

bsky.app/profile/mike...

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 27d

This seems incorrect or at least incomplete -- unofficial results show DaRosa getting under 3000 votes, which is the number needed to get on the ballot. At 2409 he'd have a decent gap to make up.

Because Kraft dropped out within six days of the preliminary, under Massachusetts state law, the next highest vote-getter could be moved onto the ballot for the general election. In this case, that would be longtime community activist Domingos DaRosa, who earned just 2.6 percent of the vote.

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 27d

This seems incorrect or at least incomplete -- unofficial results show DaRosa getting under 3000 votes, which is the number needed to get on the ballot. At 2409 he'd have a decent gap to make up.

Because Kraft dropped out within six days of the preliminary, under Massachusetts state law, the next highest vote-getter could be moved onto the ballot for the general election. In this case, that would be longtime community activist Domingos DaRosa, who earned just 2.6 percent of the vote.

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 27d

Saying he can more positively impact the city by dropping out is the first time I've agreed with Kraft

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 27d

JUST IN: Josh Kraft is dropping out of the mayoral election in Boston.

This means that Mayor Michelle Wu, the progressive incumbent, is certain to win a second term.

via WCVB: www.wcvb.com/article/josh...

Reposted by Mike Mahoney

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 27d

JUST IN: Josh Kraft is dropping out of the mayoral election in Boston.

This means that Mayor Michelle Wu, the progressive incumbent, is certain to win a second term.

via WCVB: www.wcvb.com/article/josh...

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 29d

whoops! misread 7am as pm 😅

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · 29d

Happy election day #Boston ! Thrilled to cast my vote to re-elect @wutrain.bsky.social this morning -- and grateful for our poll workers who got me in and out in about two minutes.

Polls are open until 7! Find your voting location here:
www.sec.state.ma.us/VoterRegistr...

#mapoli

An "I Voted" sticker on a nalgene water bottle

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · Sep 8

no one ever warns you how much JavaScript you'll need to write when you're starting in data science

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · Sep 5

this makes it pretty obvious what I think but: public speaking is a skill that can be learned, and investing time into a presentation makes you better at giving it.

It's fine if you don't want to! No one is making you give talks! But you shouldn't expect people to not notice if you do a bad job

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · Sep 5

I see we're doing "my ideas are so uniquely brilliant that I shouldn't need to put effort into how they're presented" discourse again

Reposted by Mike Mahoney

Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · Sep 3

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD

Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers!

This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

Mike Mahoney @mikemahoney218.com · Aug 30

that's wild! I KNOW there must be big gaps in the R tooling ecosystem, but I'm always shocked when I find holes in the python world