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Marc Maxmeister

@marcmaxmeister.bsky.social
880 followers 2.1K following 2.4K posts

Pro-Democracy, period. Senior Data Scientist 🧪, #GivingTuesday Scientist for the Disinformation Age, #Python, #writer, creator of divining.app - a deeper search for meaning

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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Interesting... the NRA gets categorized as "Crime & Legal-Related" in the national taxonomy (NTEE) of nonprofit cause areas. I think they enabled more than they've prevented, but that's only based on looking at every other country. So I could be wrong.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Anyone remember this guy? "During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away ~$6.9 billion in 2025 dollars, almost 90 percent of his fortune, to charities, foundations and universities. Called on the rich to do the same, and supported progressive taxation & the estate tax."
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Interesting...
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Our Common Defense @ourcommondefense.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Inside that American Research Group poll going around 86% rated the National Economy as Bad, Very Bad, or Terrible
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
just a reminder - this was still a good campaign
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
#TIL the 1890 US census was the first to use punch card technology in tabulation. That's WAY before computers and computing. Cool!
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GivingTuesday 🫶 @givingtuesday.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Kick off your #GivingTuesday planning with our guides at GivingTuesday.org/Participate 🫶
Two volunteers laughing while cleaning children's toys indoors, promoting a GivingTuesday practical guide.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
#AI takes a lot of work off my plate (at work) but it also sometimes teaches me new ways of doing things that I'd overlooked. #TIL that .jsonl is a separate format from .json. You can store json objects in a list so a large file remains readable even if rows are corrupted. #scrapy -friendly
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This has special meaning for me, because on my 2nd day of work at GlobalGiving in 2008 I met the founder of Hero Rats. And in 2010 I got to visit their training facility in Tanzania. www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/20...
washingtonpost.com
Hero rat who sniffed out over 100 land mines is honored with giant statue
“Magawa was one of the best rats we’ve ever had,” said Michael Raine, who works for Apopo, a nonprofit that trains animals to detect land mines.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
In 1965 Playboy magazine did a long-form interview with Martin Luther King, Jr. Transcript linked below. Such a different time, in the sense that they (a smut mag) took their roles more seriously as journalists than some journo TV shows today e.g. CBS 60 mins www.thedailybeast.com/alex-haleys-...
thedailybeast.com
When Dr. King Talked to Playboy
<p>In 1964, after he had won the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sat down for a series of interviews with the author Alex Haley that were edited into one interview that ran in <em>Playbo...
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
"The Religious Right" might be a bit less of a monolith. Kinda looks like the whole US has a church that fits it. Source: Pew I've curated most of the left-leaning content from these churches at divining.app
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
de-vibing: Add "ledger" to the list of words #claude overuses, along with "honestly" and every em-dash, ever. Others say to ban these words from #claude responses: cataloguing clocked flickering its not X, its Y (I just killed that frame today) Free ✦ Quietly, at its core
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Middlerage @middlerage.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
South Park ALWAYS understands the assignment! www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Are we the baddies? is a timeless skit that now has its own wiki page because of its meme-y-ness. Relevant in 2026. Performed in 2013. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_We_... www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKc...
youtube.com
Mitchell and Webb: "Are we the baddies?"
YouTube video by CrystalRoseCreations
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Brandon Sanderson's talk epitomizes why we hate #AI but also why we'll end up using it more than we want. me: it has all the trappings of an addictive drug. And maybe fits the same trap that Stephen King disparages in his memoire: great writers == alcoholics trope www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3u...
youtube.com
We Are The Art | Brandon Sanderson’s Keynote Speech
YouTube video by Brandon Sanderson
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Starting a new book this week - The Nerd Reich #bookSky www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ne...
simonandschuster.com
The Nerd Reich
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “This transfixing debut from journalist Durán investigates the antidemocratic ideologies espoused by tech billionaires ...
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Eric Hassan @erichassan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
i’m pretty sure “if we win this election, we’ll pay you” is bribery
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I have personally (or my data pipelines) uploaded 20% of all the spirituality & religion audio saved on archive.org. There's so little of this saved.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Who spends on public education - the answer may defy your assumptions. The US does not lead in this category, and neither does China.
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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sixty years ago today, the starship Enterprise launched and with it, a vision of the future where humanity had moved beyond its divisions. I was there at the beginning, and I can tell you...
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
25 companies that do accreditation in education turn out to be only 3 unique entities, researchers find. I wonder if they'll punish their university for exposing this? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Captured Gatekeepers: Structural Conflicts of Interest in U.S. Higher Education Accreditation
This paper examines the structural ties between federally recognized programmatic accreditors and their affiliated professional and trade associations…
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
New blog from GivingTuesday's research team: About people who don't do what their neighbors are doing, even that stuff is helping people -- and how to reach them www.givingtuesday.org/blog/spectat...
givingtuesday.org
The Spectator Paradox: Reaching the people unmoved by social pressure
TogetherTuesday brings communities across the U.S. together on June 23 for simple acts of generosity that strengthen connection and impact.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
curious how Pew's Political Typology in 2026 represents the political shift compared to 2021? (note this only uses a handful of key questions from each - the most effective at splitting the population). The tuned-out middle has pulled farther away from the spectrum. Faith & Flag types also.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
In hearing that ballots in #Alberta include a measure to ask for permission to start leaving Canada, I began to imagine Texalberta. BTW 0% of Albertans support this, but somehow it got on the ballot anyway, using dense complicated language.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Lols! 11% of conservatives think the Supreme Court is too liberal. source: Pew Political Typologies, 2026
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
102 years ago this month, 100% of Colorado's GOP nominees were not only KKK members, but hand-picked to push the Klan agenda exclusively. (And they won in a landslide because of straight ticket voting). The KKK took over both parties as needed. www.amazon.com/Gangbuster-B...
amazon.com
Gangbuster: One Man's Battle Against Crime, Corruption, and the Klan: Prendergast, Alan: 9780806542126: Amazon.com: Books
Gangbuster: One Man's Battle Against Crime, Corruption, and the Klan [Prendergast, Alan] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Gangbuster: One Man's Battle Against Crime, Corruption, an...
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Creating Tik Tok, but for churches at Divining.app #BuildInPublic I have been working on a project since 2017 that turns all the sermons from liberal churches in the US into a website people can explore, and a collection researchers can study on archive.org. The pipeline begins with discovery,…
chewychunks.wordpress.com
Creating Tik Tok, but for churches at Divining.app #BuildInPublic
I have been working on a project since 2017 that turns all the sermons from liberal churches in the US into a website people can explore, and a collection researchers can study on archive.org. The pipeline begins with discovery, then transcription and topic tagging, and archiving the audio with each transcript in a searchable way. While I was doing this, I decide to make something along lines of "TikTok, but for churches" too - since I started to realize that most church-going people consume a sermon once and forget about it.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Reminder, this 2020 Throughline episode about "how we voted" in America is still the most important context people need for understanding why politics is the way it is today. www.npr.org/2020/10/02/9...
npr.org
How We Vote : Throughline
Drunken brawls, coercion, and lace curtains. Believe it or not, how regular people vote was not something the founding fathers thought much about, or planned for. Americans went from casting votes at ...
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
just remember, the #1 obstacle to rigged US elections has always been and will remain the huge pool of octogenarian librarians that run polling places. They're not tech savvy enough to be hackable.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Dolly Parton's passing taught me of a new word today: Tzaddikim—36 hidden righteous people upon whose goodness the survival of the world depends #TIL
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John Hudgens @johnhudgens.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
This statue of Dolly Parton in Sevierville TN (her hometown) is already getting a growing bunch of flowers and butterflies as people come by. The flag next to it has already been lowered to half-mast...
The Dolly Parton statue in downtown Sevierville TN this afternoon, with flowers placed by mournersThe Dolly Parton statue in downtown Sevierville TN - a photo I took several years ago. It shows a younger version of her, holding a guitar with a butterfly balanced on it.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
This is exactly the kind of research I love! Analyzing the political messages from 86000 evangelical sermons since 2020? I was doing the same, but for all of liberal religion. (I have about 110000 in a database since 2020. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Systemic electioneering from the evangelical pulpit: Evidence from a computational analysis | PNAS
Religious institutions&rsquo; engagement in prohibited electoral advocacy is a growing concern for democratic governance. In the United States, such mobi...
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
See also: Pew Political Type questions, 2026 -- this was 1 of only 2 questions everyone agreed on, that it was net bad.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
"At the root of pseudoscience is salience, not truth" - Hank Green @~20:00min www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpGU...
youtube.com
The Trick Pseudoscience Always Uses
YouTube video by Hank Green
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
How long before chat bots contain popup and banner ads? I already find myself asking a enterprise account LLM questions instead of googling because blogs are often slow rolling answers and rankings on stuff, like cooking websites. recipe blogs are never about recipes
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Data scientist job: analyze the data, discover that 11% of people suck. My job as SENIOR data scientist: reframe and coach the DS to realize there is a material difference between saying "89% of people are awesome" and "11% of people suck" - even if the data is the same.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Interesting look at how the sermons of christian denominations resemble each other on a big data scale. With ~30k sermons, "avg_fit" scores should be 1.0 for each denomination, if they sound like themselves. ~0.5 are overly typical of christianity in general. >1.0 don't sound like sermons.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
#BuildInPublic -- since 2017 I've been compiling a huge searchable collection of sermons. Want 1000 segments about racial justice? try it out: app.divining.app/s/topic/raci...
app.divining.app
Racial Justice — Divining
Explore sermons on Racial Justice from churches across traditions, and play a mashup on Divining.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
There's a non-linear relationship between secularism and life satisfaction in the world fluorishing survey. IF you're poor, religion makes you happier; if you're not poor, secularism makes you a little more satisfied in life. YMMV with huge trend lines. www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSPublicati...
worldvaluessurvey.org
World Values Survey Association
World Values Survey Association
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Newton later ran the mint for the king. I don't think he was struggling for funding.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
If a person used "honest" as often as claude #AI does, I'd know they're lying.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Values of those in power on display: "In July 2025 The Atlantic reported that the order had been given to incinerate nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAID_i...
en.wikipedia.org
USAID in the second Trump administration - Wikipedia
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Thinking writing a history book through this lens might be valuable. The history of systems that exploit, either intentionally or by accident.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Interesting to think the fear of #AI might drive people back to becoming workers in unions. Over 90% of people want AI job protection, and trust a union more than either political party to deliver this. (from #AFLCIO) aflcio.org/press/releas...
aflcio.org
New Polling: Over 9 in 10 Favor Pro-Worker AI Agenda, Trust Unions More Than Either Party to Deliver | AFL-CIO
The AFL-CIO released new polling today, showing that more than 90% of working people favor job and privacy protections from artificial intelligence (AI) and overwhelmingly trust unions—over either pol...
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Today, just remembering Archbishop Romero, a liberation theologist in El Salvador who was gunned down for talking about power exploiting the poor and the sins of capitalism. Still relevant today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93s...
en.wikipedia.org
Óscar Romero - Wikipedia
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
US healthcare: clearly not innovating or borrowing lessons from the successes of the rest of the world
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
oops, I accidentally taught #AI how to read the secret writing on adolescent boys: ŧĥē ǫüíçķ ɓřøŵñ ƒø× ĵüɱρ øṽēř ŧĥē ļåžý ɗøğş they'll know our secrets.
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Since 2018 I've had a passive pipeline archiving all church sermons from liberal religion. After 60k, many full text+audio at archive.org/details/@mar..., this is a summary of what sermons talked about: (includes every #UU church with online sermons, plus many others)
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Marc Maxmeister @marcmaxmeister.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Today's games design insight: If you AI is having to optimize NP-hard problems in order to win against the human, you probably have a game that will be interesting enough to be fun. But this does not necessarily prove your game is fun. But if the AI can easily solve the board, that's not good.
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