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Jason Gantenberg

@jrgant.bsky.social
2.2K followers 1K following 1.1K posts

ATTRIBUTES: Senior Research Scientist at Brown SPH. Interested in epidemiology, stats, modeling, ID, complexity, causality. Knows just enough to be dangerous. ACTIVE QUEST: Never leave Emacs. STATUS: Personal account. Opinions not even my own.

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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Life is a process of blocking and reporting Spam, and then dying.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
"As in other areas of human struggle, pragmatic compromise, although not perfect, may avoid the disasters to which fanatical single-mindedness can tend." - @stephensenn.bsky.social Senn, Stephen (2003). "A comparison of methods". Applied Clinical Trials Magazine, 35-38.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Fisher's Altmetrics are pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
W/o getting drawn into the "seriously or literally" / "it'll never happen" trap, we need to stomp *hard* on the continuing effort to undermine Article 1 power of the purse by saying that this or that revenue stream makes something outside the normal budget process. 1/ www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...
nbcnews.com
Lutnick says Trump’s $5,000 checks for Americans wouldn’t rely on taxpayer funds
A top White House official suggested Congress would use a budget process to fund them. Vice President JD Vance had said tariff revenues.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Ah, the early days of electronic handwriting. If I recall, I did this on an Asus Zenbook, an early-touchscreen model that "morphed" into a tablet. The results... well, they left much to be desired.
Inscrutable handwritten (on a tablet) annotation to a paper titled "Use of Systemigrams to Identify Emergence in Complex Adaptive Systems"
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
"Some books are to be tasted; others swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested." - Francis Bacon Came across this one in the Wikipedia article on Bacon, as he features early in Umberto Eco's *Foucault's Pendulum*, which, unforgivably, I have only just now begun. Anyway, good advice.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The Mad Queen at rest
A cat sleeping atop a couch
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
From Apostolopoulos, Lich, and Lemke's *Complex Systems and Population Health: A Primer* Undoubtedly true, yet I've been hearing people say this for more than a decade now, w/ little culture shift. I keep hearing about Impact Factors, h-indexes, number of first/senior author pubs for promotion.
"Universities have begun to place uncharacteristically high emphasis on the pursuit of outputs often measures using arbitrary and questionable metrics for scholarship." - underlined text
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Overheard: "He's not dead, he's just old." Topic of conversation: James Spader
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
I’m reminded of an old joke: A student is excited to finally read Shakespeare, about whom he’s heard such great things. He makes it through Hamlet, Macbeth, & Julius Caesar with increasing frustration. Finally he exclaims in disgust: “Why this is all full of clichés!”
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
They're eating the em dashes. They're eating the colons.
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Erik Istre @eistre91.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Math PhD here. I didn't pursue it as a career and just wanted to do some real niche research. I'm a bit lapsed in that regard so this is more of an "educated layman" take. My research was in (nonclassical) foundations of math and I feel somewhat qualified to have an opinion there. 1/13
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Erik Istre @eistre91.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
I don't think we've seen evidence that LLMs can make "new discoveries". They are excellent "gap fillers". All of these places that a human with the right configuration and emotional fortitude could have made progress but didn't. (Publish or die also misaligns incentives for "hard problems".) 10/13
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
How the modern plea bargain undercuts the constitutional right to a jury trial thehill.com/opinion/judi...
thehill.com
How the modern plea bargain undercuts the constitutional right to a jury trial
If the 250th anniversary of American independence invites reflection on our foundational values, this issue deserves a place near the center.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Imagine for a second that you are a contestant on *The Voice* and you have to appeal to the sensibilities of Blake Shelton, the man who wrote (or at least sang) the lyric "Your lips taste like Sangria". Do this, my child, and you will understand humiliation.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Why do Taco Bells look like accent furniture you'd buy at Target?
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Deborah Blum @deborahb.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
This, from food safety attorney Bill Marler, is so much better than anything I've seen from the FDA.
marlerblog.com
Taylor Farms Posted Its Own Recall. It Went to 27 States, Not 5 — and the List Includes Bags Sold in Grocery Stores.
Taylor Farms has posted a recall notice on its own website. As of this morning it is still not on FDA's recalls page, which means the only
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Timothy O'Leary @timothyoleary.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
I think the difficulty of understanding feedback loops underlies many big debates in science: Origin of life: "genes first" vs "metabolism first" (neither, it's a feedback loop) Development: "nature vs nurture" (neither, it's a feedback loop) Neuroscience: "brain vs behaviour" (you guessed it!)
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
When people ask me what I want to do with my life, I have to make shit up. Because the answer is: replay the Mass Effect trilogy over and over until I'm dead.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
I have written more on George Eliot's *The Mill on the Floss* than I've read of it...
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Steve Joffe @stevejoffe.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Just say no to gift authorship.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Journal of Data Science is the only journal I will ever submit to again
"All manuscripts must be typeset in LaTeX and submitted in PDF format. Documents typeset in Microsoft Word will not be allowed."
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Fuck you, that's my name. You published in a journal with an Impact Factor of 3.5, I published in one with an IF of 436. THAT's my name.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
I think @ilyasomin.bsky.social is making sense here. (A related problem is that ethnonationalism eventually rots your brain, even if rooted in real historical grievances that might justify a secession, for instance, in the case of discrimination.)
reason.com
Two Potential Upcoming Canadian Secession Referenda and the Broader Issues they Raise
Two Canadian provinces - Alberta and Quebec - may hold secession referenda in the near future. The issues at stake have broader implications for the morality of secession and other matters.
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Eurosurveillance journal @eurosurveillance.org · 08/06/2026
Simulating the potential community spread of Andes virus (ANDV) following the introduction of a single infectious individual in a generic population, should the epidemic be left unmitigated or, alternatively, should cases be isolated. Explore the rapid communication 👇👇 #IDSky #EpiSky 🛟🩺
eurosurveillance.org
Eurosurveillance | Scenario analysis for potential community spread of Andes virus (ANDV)
We simulated the potential community spread of Andes virus (ANDV) following the introduction of a single infectious individual in a generic population, based on epidemiological parameters derived from a human-to-human historical outbreak. Under current available evidence, our analyses suggest that, within 4 months from the index case’s symptom onset, the expected outbreak size is unlikely to exceed 50 cases, with a high probability of epidemic extinction, particularly when > 50% cases are effectively isolated from the start of the outbreak.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Add to dictionary: dichotomaniacally
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
When it comes to cat hair and laptops, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Creationist journals are wild
Quote: "Whatever factor or factors enabled extreme human longevity in the pre- and immediate post-Flood worlds likely also affected the animal kingdom. Thus, direct or indirect evidence for greater past animal longevity is also de facto evidence for greater past human longevity."
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
What else can we hope for?
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Maintenance is the mortar of any society
Two telephone poles lashed together by a steel cable. The pole on the right tilts precariously over the road.Two telephone poles lashed together by a steel cable. The pole on the right tilts precariously over the road.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
My girlfriend and I went to a shanty night at Boston's West End Museum. Great fun to see how many locals knew all the words. I'm usually the folkie in a group, and I was utterly outclassed.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
referral.givedirectly.org
Send cash to moms & babies in Kenya | GiveDirectly
Send cash to 1,500 expectant mothers, alongside community-based care, to reduce the economic barriers that prevent pregnant women from having a healthy pregnancy and birth.
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Lots of posts using the 2020 NEJM superspreading event paper as estimate of typical hantavirus transmissibility. Reminder that superspreading events are by definition an outlier. If you want to estimate transmissibility you need to look at ALL infections, not just cherry pick tail of distribution.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
The R install you never knew you needed #rstats
reddit.com
From the rstats community on Reddit: R on a Flip Phone
Explore this post and more from the rstats community
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Monty Python's Flying Circus That Mitchell and Webb Look Deadwood The Wire The Sopranos Seinfeld Strangers with Candy The Office (BBC) True Detective Futurama The Simpsons Space Ghost Coast to Coast I Think You Should Leave Treme South Park
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Tragic. Please pass this along to US Chairs and Deans, and consider it when you sit on promotion committees. This, combined with the review backlog, is dire - especially for our early career researchers.
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
The past and the future are both now
reddit.com
From the emacs community on Reddit: tamagotchi on emacs!
Explore this post and more from the emacs community
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
If you've not read the ggdist package paper in IEEE, you're missing some excellent footnotes. ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/102... #rstats #dataviz
Funny footnotes in the paper describing the ggdist package for R, by Matthew Kay.
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Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
The Slow Science Movement advocates for a more thoughtful, sustainable approach to research that values quality over quantity and depth over speed. It sounds trivial, but if you are an active researcher you know it is not. 👉 www.slow-science.com/index.html
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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 12/03/2026
We’ve launched @liberalism.org! It’s a online journal of liberal ideas, exploring the ways liberalism points to a better future and how we can get there, from me and my @theihs.org colleagues @jkuznicki.bsky.social and @uncanonical.net, and feature essays from top scholars, podcasts, and more.
liberalism.org
Liberalism.org: An Online Magazine for Free and Open People
An Online Magazine for Free & Open People
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Matthew J Brown @thehangedman.com · 27/02/2026
Why I think, in the current A.I. moment, we should be reading Paul Churchland. #philsky #philsci thehangedman.com/philosophy/p...
thehangedman.com
Why We Should Be Reading Paul Churchland Right Now
The more I get into philosophical and philosophy-adjacent discussions of current-generation "artificial intelligence" (large language models and the like), the more dismayed I am not to see any discus...
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Jan Broder Engler @jbengler.de · 02/02/2026
In case you ever wondered about the differences between magrittr pipe and base pipe 🤔 This table is taken from a great stackoverflow answer by @GeorgKindermann stackoverflow.com/questions/67... #rstats #dataviz #phd
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
I've found JabRef to be a pretty good interface for managing a big bibtex database. Customizable and capable of addressing many of the issues summarized here. Even still, I almost always have to make tweaks to the local .bib files I pull off for individual papers.
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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Once again, immigration is not even a problem. Immigrants are not more criminal, they don't cost jobs, they don't harm the economy. There is no reason for any of this. It is hurting ourselves to hurt them.
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Tiago Peixoto @tiago.skewed.de · 15/01/2026
This is hilarious: creepylink.com
creepylink.com
CreepyLink
Make your links look as suspicious as possible
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Welcome to the shithole.
theconversation.com
The 5 stages of the ‘enshittification’ of academic publishing
Academic publishing now shows the same decline that has hit social media and online marketplaces.
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Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · 25/11/2025
If we hit $70k today and $35k was matched by our donor, we would get to 21% of our goal. Crowdfunding campaigns that crack 20% are highly likely to meet their goals. Please help us hit this important milestone gofund.me/638697766
gofund.me
Donate to The Liberal Currents Startup Fund, organized by Adam Gurri
To fight fascism we need opposition media with a backbone. Liberal Currents is that. Help… Adam Gurri needs your support for The Liberal Currents Startup Fund
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
Heyo! Gemini 3 Pro actually does the tool call. gemini.google.com/share/f88a98...
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Jason Gantenberg @jrgant.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
One "upgrade" in Gemini 3 Pro is that my "Asshole" gem, which I instructed to be a complete asshole to me, no longer works. Flagged as abusive and profane. As an alternative, Gemini suggests roleplay a specific character. So I said "embody Begbie from Trainspotting". The funniest "thinking" step:
The "Crafting a Fake Persona" step in Gemini 3 Pro's reasoning when creating the character of Begbie from Irvine Welsh's *Trainspotting*.
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