iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 3h

My seventh grader joined the school softball team this year, having never played before. Girls' sports have been mostly left alone by private equity so far and it shows. It's sad that this is denied to boys, but I'm enjoying watching her progress. Making contact on her first batting cage trip!

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 3h

My son has gotten into baseball and has so far been fine with playing in Little League with mostly used equipment, but half of his team left this season to join a club team that costs over a grand a year in direct fees alone. I guess that price is actually pretty tame in the youth baseball space.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 3h

Private equity has apparently tired of sucking any surplus out of for-profit businesses and expanded into converting more altruistic enterprises into profit-making ones. For youth sports, this seems a hugely negative change for everyone involved except the few profiting. www.wsj.com/sports/baseb...

wsj.com

Advanced Stats and $500 Bats: Why Baseball for 6-Year-Olds Is Breaking the Bank

Travel teams, high-end gear and specialized training are turning America’s pastime into a sport for rich kids.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

There are many areas of the tax code that primarily benefit the minority who can take advantage. We've seen people getting huge tax breaks by stashing private assets in retirement accounts, but it goes further, to things like 529s. We should make the tax code fairer by addressing these tax breaks.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I'm wary of politicians telling people that we can solve problems by taxing Other People. I'd like to see this framed as an issue of fairness: We're good at taxing labor income. But through an array of tax breaks, we don't tax income from wealth and pass-through income as much. We should fix that.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I assume that the location at the Convention Center will never die.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Shoutout to Andrew Beaton (author of the piece) or whoever at @wsj.com had fun with the graph titles in this article about Travis Kelce.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Was I a fool in school for cutting gym?

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm just sticking with "haven't got a clue," but those options sound better.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The same is true of "luxury townhouses" or basically anything new other than detached single-family homes. Purchasing one of these means purchasing a lot less land than with a detached SFH. The structure depreciates and the land (often) appreciates, widening the affordability gap over time.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

If I can find a good donut place while traveling, I make a point of buying some to bring back for my family. ChuChu Donuts were definitely worth the effort to transport back from Des Moines (and walking a mile out of my way early in the morning).

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The interior was just as ornate, and they let visitors wander around much of it when nothing is going on.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I was not expecting the Iowa State Capitol to go this hard.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The view of Chicago when coming into O'Hare still impressed me too, even through a cloudy window.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I've lived in the DC area for over 15 years, but I still snap pictures of the view of the Potomac when my Metro train pops over the bridge on the way to National.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It was a lovely day to meet this turtle in Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

It was a beautiful day for a ride on the MBT.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Looking up tour dates for my favorite Sardinian stoner-rock band (Elepharmers), I saw that they're playing this festival in Sardinia. I certainly wouldn't have expected to see Beth Orton listed, but this honestly sounds like a great festival lineup.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

One wild thing about this is that non-dealerships are almost universally unable to deal with EV-specific issues right now. But the dealers are so concerned with not being able to overcharge for oil changes and brake pads that they ignore this massive opportunity to make money off of EV service.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I can go again on Monday and get one for you then! It's across the street from my office.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

To be fair, this is made worse by the person making this poster for the library not feeling the need to explain that "gimp" is an open-source graphics editing package. But this could be solved by giving the program a better name than gimp in the first place.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Sometimes when someone gives a tool a name they find clever or funny, it can eventually end up just looking really dumb when use if the tool expands to other groups. Like, say, this:

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The Metro pop-up store has some nice Metro-themed merchandise, and also a lot of stuff for a dorm room (I guess?).

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

According to the billing people, they have "audited it" and determined that my daughter definitely had surgery in five minutes. I was told to contact the doctor's office, and then they transferred me to the wrong office. The American medical billing system has me incandescent with rage once again.

static.klipy.com

Twin Flames SNL: Flames on the Side of My Face

ALT: Twin Flames SNL: Flames on the Side of My Face

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

My daughter has a procedure performed 2-3 times per year. It takes a few minutes and I owe a $30 copay after insurance. In July it was billed as surgery, for thousands of dollars. I've spent hours calling the Children's National billing office and they just told me that they won't fix it.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Poorly-paid graduate students and postdocs daring to ask for more: "ungrateful and transactional." On the other hand, the much-better-paid administrators and professors who ensure that those salaries remain low are clearly neither ungrateful nor transactional.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Definitely sounds like a story that belongs on economist writing every day dot com

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

There are lots of examples of drama kings in popular media, though only white guys are coming to mind for me right now. Ross and Ted are good suggestions, and I would offer Tom in (500) Days of Summer as well.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The much bigger problem (in terms of long-term sustainability) is Medicare, which is set up to essentially ensure that it will generate ever-expanding funding deficits without major changes.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Also, please spend a few minutes ensuring that your kids are wearing their helmets correctly! I never harass people about this, but I see so many kids wearing helmets so loose that they don't protect the forehead at all.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

We adopted an orphaned kitten that has been (after only a few days) playing well with the resident almost-one-year-old cat, and now my photo roll mainly looks like this.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I applied to a job a while back that made me do an exercise involving analyzing a dataset and writing a couple of memos about it, and I found that to be kind of fun. Definitely made it much more annoying to get that rejection later.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I got my first smartwatch last week, and my main takeaway so far is that I'm not completely sure that I needed access to all of the information I now have about my body.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Part of this trend is just the aging of the population, but I think what makes it so dramatic (even unbelievable) is that multiple effects are all working in the same direction: aging growing wealth falling international flight prices greater need for passports to visit nearby countries and more!

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

One reason this isn't exactly "the percentage of the US population with a valid passport" is that the numerator sums passport books and cards. Passport cards didn't exist until 2008, and it's unclear how many of the 4.5M issued in FY2025 went to people who didn't have a passport book as well.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I've seen this graph before, but I still can't quite wrap my head around it being accurate. The bump around 2007 makes sense (around the time of a mandate to have passports to travel to more nearby countries), but I think what breaks my brain is the overall linear trend back to a 3% level in 1989.

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Reposted by Gray Kimbrough

Guy Berger @econberger.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Folks - I'm seeing a fair amount of labor force participation takes that don't realize the published numbers pre- and post-January 2026 are NOT COMPARABLE. Of the 0.8pp decline in LFPR over the past year, over *half* is a statistical artifact. (The other half is real.)

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

My friend said something like, "Surely she'll want an amicable split, right?" And he was so naive but I wanted to think that was possible too. In the end though, so much good has come from it, both for me and my kids. I hope I can continue to find ways to continue the trend of the past four years.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Not having many pictures of myself or any experience with dating apps, I used this picture and met the woman who is now my wife. I knew that things would work out eventually, but couldn't have imagined everything that would happen in four years. My daughter and I saw Taylor Swift in Amsterdam!

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

A milestone birthday today has me thinking about four years ago, when I traveled to NYC and first told a friend that after a year in therapy on my own, I knew I would be getting a divorce. I had no idea how hard things would be or how great they would then get, but his girlfriend took this picture.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I switched to a (very basic) time-of-use rate schedule when I bought my EV but had to switch back when I installed solar. My production was only being applied to usage within the same time period, and I built up an excess that would eventually be paid out at a much lower rate.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Jake, is this your first day on Al Gore's Internet?

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Redefining p-values in terms of r-values

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

My then-girlfriend found these great collapsible bike helmets for us to use while riding Bixi bikes two years ago, so obviously I needed to marry her.

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Gray Kimbrough @graykimbrough.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I'm getting excited about going to Montreal in a week and a half and went ahead and got my monthly Bixi membership (under $20 USD). That station density is just so beautiful.

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