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Nick Barrowman

@nbarrowman.bsky.social
124 followers 507 following 234 posts

"pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" – Antonio Gramsci nick-barrowman.carrd.co/#

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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
open.spotify.com/track/0Gc5rs...
open.spotify.com
Do I Ever Cross Your Mind
Chet Atkins, Dolly Parton · Chet Atkins - The Master And His Music · Song · 2001
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
"in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." – Benjamin Franklin This statement is false. Proof by contradiction: If we can be certain that this statement is true, then we can be certain of death, taxes, AND this statement. Therefore this statement is false.
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
"To see ourselves clearly, we don't use mirrors. We use relationships." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | In a World of Mirrors, Everything Is Strange (Gift Article)
Staring at ourselves on screens, on video and on social media is taking us to a dark place.
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Thomas Zeitzoff @zeitzoff.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
The underlying paper here on the (potential) drawbacks of remote work is interesting. But the claimed effect size is massive: “Remote work explains a third of the deterioration in mental health over the last 15 years.” And it warrants skepticism.
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PJ @septemberrising.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
Glasgow now, there is no place in Scotland for racism or fascism.
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
I’m excited to be presenting a tutorial about my vtree #Rstats package 📦 at the useR!2026 conference in Warsaw. The conference is July 6 - 9 and my session is on the afternoon of July 6. Please DM me if you have a questions or suggestions. #useR2026 user2026.r-project.org
A example variable tree produced by the vtree R pacakge.
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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
The methods section is the most important section of a paper. Without knowing the methods, the results are literally meaningless. So it's not OK to relegate the methods to the end. Because this suggests they are an optional afterthought rather than the essential core of the entire paper.
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Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
“Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the 'just war' theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.” -Pope Leo in Magnifica Humanitas
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Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
“The way society treats migrants, reveals whether its sense of justice is driven by fear or by the spirit of fraternity.” - Pope Leo in #MagnificaHumanitas
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Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
“The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good.” -Pope Leo in #MagnificaHumanitas
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American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Mindel Sheps b #OTD 1913 (d 13 Jan 1973) ASA Fellow 1970. Physician, political healthcare activist, biostatistics professor, advisor to WHO, she made substantial contributions to mathematical demography but is best known for her highly influential NEJM 1958 paper on the asymmetry of relative risk.
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Hannah Shelley, MLIS (Maggots, Lycanthropes & Ice Skeletons) @hannahshelley.site · 15/05/2026
Probably my weirdest and most niche blog post yet. I got nerd-sniped. You know how it is
hannahshelley.neocities.org
Simulacra and Citation
The Pope, Baudrillard, and finding myself inside the hypertext
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Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
And if you are genuinely interested in the therapeutic value of placebos, at least make sure you understand how regression-to-the-mean and adverse-event reporting in clinical trials work. Though your blissful ignorance might get you a NEJM paper... zenodo.org/records/3886...
zenodo.org
Nonplussed by placebos: A response to Colloca and Barsky (2020)
In a recent review published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Placebo and Nocebo Effects), Colloca and Barsky concluded that “Placebo and nocebo effects are powerful, pervasive, and common in c...
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Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
I haven't complained about so-called placebo effects in a long time, so here an oldie but a goodie from @nbarrowman.bsky.social on the topic. www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...
thenewatlantis.com
The Myth of the Placebo Effect
Nick Barrowman on the shaky science underlying a popular idea
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Tim Osborne Photography 🍁 @timosborne.ca · 30/04/2026
Got up early in hopes of catching this photo before work this morning. There's only a few days each year where it's cool enough in the morning to make this shot possible. Thankfully, today was one of those days! #wildlife #birds
A red winged blackbird's breath can be seen as he sings his morning song. The bird is sitting on a cattail and the rising morning sun illuminates his breath.
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Honestly think this is one of the best videos on YouTube. Beautiful folk song that, like, were it not for the very specific circumstances of the modern internet I would never have been able to experience anything like at all in my life. I am enriched by such things. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIMK...
youtube.com
Özgür Baba - Dertli Dolap
YouTube video by Elif'in Hecesi
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
‪ It is difficult to get a researcher to understand a statistical principle if getting published depends on their not understanding it.
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Paulo do Cantos Circulaçōes cantosverso.org/item/o-homem... 1930 - 1936? Museu Do Design E Da Moda, Lisbon
Circulacoes:
Artérias mais importantes (23 letras-23 artérias)
Veias mais importantes (20 letras-20 veias)
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 16/04/2026
Make It Myself xkcd.com/3233/
Comic. [Person and person with white hat facing two boxes stacked with $80 price tag and sale tag on each box.] PERSON 1: They want $80 for this? I could make one myself for $10 in parts, an hour of work, a trip to the hardware store, another $30 in parts, another few hours of work, two more trips to the store for $20 more in parts, another hour of work to redo the first hour of work because I messed up, and $80 to buy this when the one I made breaks.
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batkaren @batkaren.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing humans the other 364 days of the year are not fools’ days.
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
In this time of senseless warfare, here’s a very moving song. The Crow on the Cradle, performed by Lady Maisery youtu.be/dOoJ-mMy8x0?... The song was written by Sydney Carter. Here are the lyrics, which are really worth reading: unionsong.com/u115.html
youtu.be
The Crow on the Cradle
YouTube video by Lady Maisery - Topic
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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
"One of the most heartbreaking examples of nonverbal communication to emerge from Iran. I cannot call this a mere propaganda piece. It is the unbearable truth, laid bare through the profound art of cinematography and animation." #MinabSchool t.me/politblogme/22
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 26/03/2026
This part is sharp and important: bureaucracy inherently requires discretion but can't acknowledge that because it derives its legitimacy from being objective Meaning it has an unresolvable tension at its core
Organisations that run on formal procedure need someone inside the process to interpret rules, notice exceptions, recognise when the categories no longer fit the case. If the organisation concedes that its outcomes depend on the discretion of the people executing it, then the procedure is not a procedure but a suggestion, and the authority the organisation derives from appearing rule-governed collapses. So the judgment has to happen, and it has to look like something else. It has to look like following the procedure rather than interpreting it.

I’ve come to think of this as the “bureaucratic double bind” – the organisation cannot function without the judgment, and it cannot acknowledge the judgment without undermining itself and being seen as “political”. One solution to this problem is to replace the judgment with a number. In his 1995 book Trust in Numbers, the historian of science Theodore Porter argued that organisations adopt quantitative rules not because numbers are more accurate but because they are more defensible. Judgment is politically vulnerable. Rules are not. The procedure exists to make discretion disappear, or seem to. The system’s actual flexibility lives entirely in this unacknowledged interpretive work, which means it can be removed by anyone who mistakes it for inefficiency.
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Georgeous McGeorgeface 🇬🇧🇫🇮🇩🇪🏳️‍🌈🇪🇸🇮🇨🇳🇴 @georgeous.one · 17/03/2026
Cartoon image titled "Saint Patrick Driving the snakes out of Ireland".
It's a view through the windscreen. St P is driving, looking unamused in his mitre. The snakes in the car are complaining: "Are we there yet?", "How much further?", "I have to go to the bathroom", "I'm going to be sick"
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Highlighter I choose carefully At first The parts that really matter But soon I realize It all matters And everything is bright like sunlight
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Elliot @1t2ls.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Today’s poem(s): Katana Smith, “Three of Us” and “Shitty Boyfriend” #lunchpoems
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Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Judgment of the international Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany.
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Colin Gorrie @colingorrie.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle. It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...
deadlanguagesociety.com
How far back in time can you understand English?
An experiment in language change
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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
Kitamura Junko, Japanese ceramics artist #womensart
Ceramic vessel in black with white dots and ridges coming from the small neck in a swirling pattern all on a white surface
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Here's some bonkers microbiology terminology:
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
There is literally no situation where Comic Sans is a good choice
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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
I cannot sufficiently underline how despicable it is that the IOC has required Haitian Olympic athletes to remove an image representing the leader of the Haitian Revolution (against SLAVERY) from their uniforms.
MILAN (AP) — The troubled Caribbean country, Haiti, has fielded two athletes for the Milan Cortina Winter Games, and they will proudly wear Haitian symbols — although one less than intended after intervention by the International Olympic Committee.

The skiers will compete in uniforms designed by Italian-Haitian designer Stella Jean that originally featured an image of Toussaint Louverture, the former slave who led a revolution that created the world’s first Black republic in 1804. The IOC ruled that the image violated Olympic rules barring political symbolism, requiring Jean to come up with a creative solution: painting over the nation’s founding father.
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Baldur Bjarnason @baldurbjarnason.com · 05/02/2026
> At present the realities are life and death, peace and war, fascism and democracy; we are in a world which may soon become unfit for human beings to live in. A writer must decide at what remove from this conflagration he can produce his best work and be careful to keep there Cyril Connolly, 1938.
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
I just realized that in the Chicago song "Hard To Say I’m Sorry", Peter Cetera never actually gets there. In addition to declaring “It’s hard for me to say I’m sorry”, he sings "I really want to tell you I'm sorry", and "I will make it up to you, I promise to", but he Never. Actually. Apologizes.
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Today's @nytimes.com dialogue with Ross Douthat & Jay Bhattacharya is tough sledding. I wrote a book on how silent transmission made COVID harder to stop and drove misleading narratives. The interview continues to mislead as a means to seize more power. a 🧵 www.amazon.com/Asymptomatic...
amazon.com
Asymptomatic: The Silent Spread of COVID-19 and the Future of Pandemics
Asymptomatic: The Silent Spread of COVID-19 and the Future of Pandemics
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
The road to hell is paved with misaligned incentives.
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David Fisman. @dfisman.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
open.substack.com/pub/davidfis...
open.substack.com
The RCT Trap
When “Gold Standard” Evidence Becomes an Excuse for Inaction
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Rachel Gilmore @rachelgilmore.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
🚨Want to know which Canadian companies are profiting off of ICE and Trump’s violent mass deportation agenda? Well I just spent the last few days digging into exactly that. Here are the companies I found, how much they’re making, and whether they’re getting Canadian taxpayer dollars. Sneak peek:
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Amnesty Canada @amnesty.ca · 28/01/2026
Take action now to stop Bill C-12, which would put our friends and neighbours at risk.  Join us in calling on the Senate to uphold our values of fairness and justice by voting against Bill C-12. takeaction.amnesty.ca/page/173197/...
takeaction.amnesty.ca
Bills C-2 and C-12 are a Threat to Refugee Rights. Tell the Canadian Government to Withdraw It.
Bills C-2 and C-12 undermines due process and dignity. It risks turning Canada’s approach to refugees and migrants into one built on arbitrariness and political discretion instead of fairness and just...
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Eric Wickham @ericwickham.ca · 27/01/2026
New from me: More Than 100 Gazans Have Been Accepted to Canadian Universities. Canada Isn’t Letting Them In.
pressprogress.ca
More Than 100 Gazans Have Been Accepted to Canadian Universities. Canada Isn’t Letting Them In.
See a map of the graduate programs they're planning to attend, if the government finally processes their visas
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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 23/01/2026
❤️❤️❤️
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. —Martin Luther King Jr. Letter From Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963 letterfromjail.com
letterfromjail.com
Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter to 8 white church leaders, written from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.
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Miranda Keeling @mirandakeeling.com · 17/01/2026
On my walk in the woods I come across this ghost-leaf - veined insides yawning through the gaps that winter has torn in its surface, caught, as if half-way between this world and the next, a delicate, decayed delight.
A photo I took of a partly decayed leaf on a fallen log in the woods.
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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
The umbrella, 1883 by painter Marie Bashkirtseff #WomensArt
Painting of a standung whinte girl facing forwards dressed in dark clothes holding a large black umbrella
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3wombats @3wombats.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
youtube.com/watch?v=0Qpj... ❤️🌏
youtube.com
"Peace Train" featuring Yusuf / Cat Stevens | Playing For Change | Song Around The World
YouTube video by Playing For Change
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Andrea Woo @andreawoo.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Canada’s privacy watchdog announced Thursday it is investigating Elon Musk's X after widespread reports of users generating sexualized deepfakes through the social-media platform’s AI chatbot, Grok. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...
theglobeandmail.com
Canada’s privacy watchdog expands probe into X over Grok’s sexualized deepfakes
Users have been generating the images using the Elon Musk-owned platform’s AI chatbot
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Make the right choice
Excel or REDCap?
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Torqolbo! @torq.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Introduce yourself with 5 facts: 1. It's nine in the morning, long after December 2. I'm writing you now just to see if you're better 3. Toronto is cold 4. But I like where I'm living 5. There's music on Ossington all through the evening
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Nick Barrowman @nbarrowman.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
This seems particularly relevant in our current moment: “Silent bystanders act as enablers because watching others ignore something encourages one to deny its presence.” – Eviatar Zerubavel, The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life. Here’s a further excerpt:
… it is psychologically much more difficult to trust one's senses and remain convinced that what one sees or hears is actually there when no one else around one seems to notice it. The discrepancy between others' apparent inability to notice it and one's own sensory experience creates a sense of ambiguity that further increases the likelihood that one would ultimately succumb to the social pressure and opt for denial.

Such pressure is further compounded as the number of silent bystanders increases. As Dr. Tomas Stockmann, a brave, relentless fighter against denial, is bound to discover in Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People, "the worst enemy to truth ... is the majority." The more people I see ignoring the elephant in the room, the harder it is for me to remain convinced that it is indeed standing there, as my own senses tell me. And the situation of being in a minority, constantly resisting the majority's pressure to join the conspiracy and ignore it, inevitably becomes more pronounced as the number of those silent conspirators increases. As we very well know, broaching an unmentionable subject is much more daunting when there are 30 rather than just three other people around, none of whom seems eager to discuss it.
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Chris Weston @chrisweston.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
That sounds like the other side of that Arthur C Clarke thing about advanced technology and magic. Any sufficiently mature technology ceases to be seen as technology, or something like that ;)
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