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Amelia McNamara

@amelia.mn
5.1K followers 547 following 386 posts

Associate professor of statistics and data science at the University of St Thomas. Into data visualization and reproducible research, obsessed with R. pronoun.is/she website: amelia.mn mastodon: @vis.social/@amelia

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Reposted by Amelia McNamara
Jer Thorp @jerthorp.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
germainekoh.com/works/fair-w...
germainekoh.com
Germaine Koh work
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Anna Fergusson @annafergusson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is the week in my intro data science course where students learn that runif() is said r-unif not run-if, & they are like "duh" but no one had ever said it out loud before so they didn't know. Def read/watch more about this from @amelia.mn & of course @felienne.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy, links⬇️
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Ingrid Burrington @lifewinning.com · 17/09/2026
feels kind of wild that the default great future achievement of LLMs is "someday if could cure cancer" when mRNA vaccines are in fact making progress on potentially curing or preventing certain cancers, very "we have curing cancer at home"
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 17/09/2026
WOW this is a big story, don't know how I missed it til now. Not that MTurk was perfect (it was not!) but what are people going to do to get their training data now? Are we thinking we're done training models?! And as this article makes clear, many many workers are going to be affected.
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 17/09/2026
Learn more and register here! sites.google.com/umn.edu/2026... Women in AI and Data Science, October 26.
sites.google.com
2026 WiADS
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Renee (paix120) @paix120.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Several people at work and in my personal life are sick right now. There's a COVID surge. Repeat infections have cumulative impact. Great time to mask up again if you stopped.
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 14/09/2026
This is going to be so good! Wish I was able to be there in person.
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 14/09/2026
I have many complaints about software, but I have to give Zoom kudos for prompting you to update as you are closing the program, not when you are opening it. Other tools should follow suit!
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 12/09/2026
This feels at least adjacent to the sort of nerds I know, so I'll ask-- is anyone else at Vintage Computer Fest Midwest this weekend? Mostly here because my spouse is a hardware nerd, but tagged along as it sounded interesting.
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Andy Boyle @andymboyle.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
all these years after reading it, this still remains one of the greatest pieces of journalism ever committed
nytimes.com
Fighting to Live as the Towers Died (Published 2002)
The last words of the men and women who were trapped on the high floors of the twin towers.
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 10/09/2026
Love 2 find a post where I make reference to "future me" wanting a piece of information, which I then need to reference two years in the future. forum.posit.co/t/tips-for-u...
forum.posit.co
Tips for using iPad and Apple Pencil in Quarto revealjs slides notes canvas
It's not a great workflow - I've found that using anything scripted ends up running into one of the various issues with print. For example, if you render -> present in external web -> print, on my Ch...
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Jer Thorp @jerthorp.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Fifteen years ago I wrote about my work on the algorithm that helped to place the names on the 9/11 memorial. "In the days and months that I worked on the arrangement algorithm and the placement tool, I found myself frequently speaking these names out loud." blprnt.medium.com/all-the-name...
blprnt.medium.com
All The Names: Algorithmic Design and the 9/11 Memorial
This post was originally published on June 10, 2011 on my blog. Since that link is pretty hard to find, I’m re-publishing it here.
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N Sims @copyrightlibn.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This is particularly relevant for the Twin Cities which has had weird weather today, but also everybody else. The reason your weather apps are getting glitchier, is bc. NOAA got eviscerated and can't sample atmospheric conditions as much. The data is worse for everybody.
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Fossilized Tree Sap @amberrl.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
I do actually wish crop art had a People’s Choice voting box like Christmas trees, wreaths, and some other art things. Related: did you know you can send messages to crop artists? Tell them good job, offer to buy their piece, etc. just talk to the person at the desk outside the room!
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mplsike.bsky.social @mplsike.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Crop art goes hard this year, as we’ve all expected. I did my part with these five contributions. #cropart #seedart #mnstatefair #art
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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
like the reason Dolly feels like an exceptional human being is because all the things we're talking about today in her lifetime of philanthropy trace back to just .... having empathy and we live in the era of "I Don't Know How to Explain to You That You Should Care About Other People"
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 24/08/2026
I'm so excited to learn that @merbroussard.bsky.social will be keynoting the Women in AI and Data Science conference this October in Minneapolis! www.linkedin.com/pulse/making... I love that they always seem to get someone AI-critical to kick things off.
linkedin.com
Making Sense of AI Together
August 24th, 2026 AI, Ethics, and the Future of Tech… Meredith Broussard is bringing it all to WiADS 2026! The featured keynote speaker for the Women in AI and Data Science (WiADS) Conference is none ...
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rainy jorbo ☔️ @bookenj.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
flock shouldn’t exist. there’s no compromise to be had. my offer is no, and my counter-offer is also no
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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 23/08/2026
I love Minneapolis
Jake Lang, a Nazi asshole, getting his ass picturesquely whooped in downtown Minneapolis by a person dressed as Spider-Man

I cannot overstate how much this photo looks like a comic book cover

Photo credit Chris Juhn Photography
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Tommy Siegel @tommysiegel.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
but seriously this fast food situation is getting out of control
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stdlib @stdlib.io · 08/06/2026
For years, open source communities relied on visible friction: people got stuck, asked questions in public, and became part of a community. AI is changing that. What happens when newcomers are no longer visible—and neither side knows the other is there? blog.stdlib.io/ai-and-the-i...
blog.stdlib.io
What We're No Longer Seeing: AI and the Invisible Newcomer in Open Source
How AI is absorbing the visible friction that open-source communities have always relied on to see—and welcome—newcomers.
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Gen Wojcik @genandgenes.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
An important read.
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Ann VanderMeer @annvandermeer.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Sharing again because @ghoulpus.bsky.social story is just that good. Ya gotta read it!
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 26/07/2026
Pretty sure this is a local graffiti artist's tag, but it *is* kind of calling out for an #rstats package.
Lightpole covered in stickers. One reads RUINR NCG. HIGH VIZ
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Jimmi Lotts @jimmilotts.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
A year or so ago this street art would have been nearly void of profound meaning. In 2026 Minneapolis? Intensely poignant and political. We had whistles. They had guns. Minneapolis.
A large posterboard designed in the shape of a whistle. It is attached to a wooden street pole next to a large park.
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 19/07/2026
My beloved 1986 Volvo 240, which turned 40 this year (yes, I had a party), is a manual. It may just outlive me.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
I am losing my mind. Chat isn’t a search engine. this isn’t normal. framing it as normative is slimy. Tone, vibes all bad.
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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 13/07/2026
ICE agents shouldn’t be executing people on the street even if they ARE the target of the warrant
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 06/07/2026
@minedogucu.com is something up with www.learnr4free.com?
learnr4free.com
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Hannah Frick @frick.ws · 03/07/2026
A really nice data visualization and story-telling in the scrolling of this Pudding article on women's clothing sizes. They are a mess but this shows you in which ways they are messed up: pudding.cool/2026/02/wome...
pudding.cool
Sizing chaos
The inter-generational struggle to find clothes that fit more than a tiny portion of women
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
from my own perspective this is one of the greatest harms done by this government and plotting a course to reverse this damage is must be a very priority in our speech and our activism
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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 16/06/2026
I listened to the press conference so you don’t have to: - 15 defendants, all from the Twin Cities. 13 currently in custody - Direct Action MN mentioned - quotes and video from people fedposting on Instagram - lots of very obvious lies, local reporters were skeptical and they cut the Q&A off
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Sharon Z @sharonz.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
I leave myself good calendar notes. Anyhoo, tomorrow is JD Vance’s launch of a book with the same title as a much better book by bell hooks. I’ve been meaning to get this one for awhile anyway and am looking forward to flat sales for him, so adding the bell hooks book to cart
My calendar reminder:

JD Vance book release date - order Communion by Bell Hooks from
Bookshop
Tuesday, Jun 16, 2026
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 16/06/2026
Just a reminder that today is a great day to buy bell hook's Communion and mess up someone else's SEO and rankings. I haven't purchased anything on Amazon in years but I went back just to do this.
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Alberto Cairo @albertocairo.com · 11/06/2026
In the newsletter: "Twenty years of Hans Rosling's famous TED talk": openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com/p/twenty-yea... #dataViz #infographics #DataVisualization #dataJournalism
openvisualizationacademy.beehiiv.com
Twenty years of Hans Rosling's famous TED talk
Celebrating the transformative power of joy and epiphany
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Elizabeth Davis @elizabethdavis.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
To chime in as a Minneapolitan: whistles made a huge difference (and still do, ICE is still kidnapping people here, just at a slower pace). But what really helped was the pre-existing neighborhood groups from the summer of 2020, so get yourself whistle kits and start talking to your neighbors *now*
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Bruno Dias @brunodias.dev · 09/06/2026
grabbing every small business owner I can find by the shoulders and yelling directly into their faces that IF I DON'T HAVE AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT I CAN'T SEE ANY OF YOUR SHIT GET A FUCKING WEBSITE
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 08/06/2026
Genuinely LOL'd several times while reading this www.theringer.com/2026/05/28/t...
theringer.com
The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech
The bugs, broken apps, and nightmare customer-service bots we can't escape, presented as a blessed and sacred addendum to Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on AI
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Kisha Delain @skyintist.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
wut
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 05/06/2026
I remind my husband of this several times a year. Same with if I'm killed in a mass shooting. Please politicize my death!
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 30/05/2026
Georgi was the realtor we worked with to find our house! I'm not on Instagram anymore but she has a great eye for tile and other architectural details.
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Amelia McNamara @amelia.mn · 30/05/2026
Let's go, Minnesota! racketmn.com/report-74-of...
racketmn.com
Report: 74% of Working-Age Minnesotans Don't Mess Around With AI - Racket
Plus Klobes picks a running mate, both parties throw parties, and buy our damn T-shirt in today's Flyover news roundup.
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Megan Goodwin @mpgphd.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
absolutely the fuck not
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
I guess I am live-tweeting my reading of the Magnifica Humanitas
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Kuba Suder 🇵🇱🇺🇦 @mackuba.eu · 25/05/2026
Move slow and don't break things
apnews.com
Pope calls for robust regulation of AI in manifesto that ponders the future of humanity
Pope Leo XIV has called for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit.
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Joe Dator @joedator.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Today's Daily Cartoon for @newyorker.com by Kevin Maher and me.
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Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives @darrencullen.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
On the tube
Photo of a fake OpenAi ad on the overground. Text: "Yes, we built a machine that tells teenagers to kill themselves.

But — it might also help them with their homework."

Chatgpt logo
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Andrew Sinclair @jandrewsinclair.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
I miss the old 538. It was a good website. Even if you disagreed with the models, conclusions, etc., it compiled a lot of useful data in one place, was completely free to the public, and made for a lot of great class discussions.
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Chris Steller @chrissteller.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
This is the Gaviidae Common loon. (I never thought about the pun ok “Common” in the mall name … get it, “Common Loon” is the state bird, gaviidae is the scientific name for loons)
Similar but much more colorful design of mall interior with golden bird sculpture with wings spread
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