a.k.a. My foray into data Some Context Recently I decided to reconnect with my math and data loving roots and start to try and pivot in my career a little bit. This was a heck of a year to decide to do that, I had some major life changes including health woes, a cross country move, my mother passing away, and a startup initiative falling through. To say that this year is a lot is an extreme understatement.

Math Helps Me Know Where to Direct My Rage Let’s talk about greed. Specifically: the greed that is interest on home mortgage loans. As with many things, this blog post is inspired by a tweet. This time, it is my own: If you’re really interested, you can take a look at the thread on Twitter, but the TLDR of it is that I wanted to break down the cost of the loan to the person.

Context Setting Remember this tweet from Part 1? Elon Musk’s wealth: 2020: $24.6 billion 2021: $151 billion Jeff Bezos’ wealth: 2020: $113 billion 2021: $177 billion Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth: 2020: $54.7 billion 2021: $97 billion Bill Gates’ wealth: 2020: $98 billion 2021: $124 billion Tax the damn rich. — Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) May 1, 2021 I’m going to a quick verification of these numbers. Partly because verification is important, and partly because it’s important to start finding resources to reference for similar exercises.

It may be the Age of the Pandemic, but as someone who works in tech communities I still find myself going heads down to plan a technical conference that we’re planning on having in person toward the end of the year, with contingency plans. I’ll talk a little more about that aspect of event planning in a later post, for now I’m going to be ramping up on a few common themes between virtual, in-person, and hybrid events.

It’s the end of March May: you know what that means: It’s about to be the beginning of Pride Month. I have really mixed feelings about Pride Month, at times. There is a lot to celebrate, but there’s also a lot to do. There has also been a lot of change, in my lifetime alone. That First Pride, and The Lead Up When I was in middle school I definitely had a “first boyfriend”.

For when you forgot to use -m on that last git commit and other foibles. What, why? When I was getting started with tech working in college, I would be filled with dread any time I accidentally found myself in vi / vim. I felt like I was stuck in there and no matter how may times someone told me how to get out of it, for some reason my brain just shut down.

Whenever we change a name, git tracks a different author. The following names are all different authors insofar as git is concerned: Quintessence quintessence Quinn quin Similar applies if you are using different email addresses, e.g. different personal addresses or different work / contract addresses. And then of course there are situations where people legally change their names, for a variety of reasons like transition, marriage, severing ties with family of origin, etc.

This is part 1 of a series about how much money is needed, really, to live in the United States. There will be a TOC to help with going between the posts as they go live. The Impetus I was Doom Scrolling, as you do in a pandemic, I encountered a tweet about some of the US billionaires: Elon Musk’s wealth: 2020: $24.6 billion 2021: $151 billion Jeff Bezos’ wealth: 2020: $113 billion