Tom Stearns @tomstearns@octodon.social
I do stuff sometimes. Teaching, research, data analysis, sometimes write a song or write a thing. I keep busy. What do you do? Why?
fun with lenses
#drwho
I have unread emails older than these feet.
12 years ago a lovely person made me the best #magneticPoetry set ever. Sometimes I still play with it.
Sometimes I make non-numbers into numbers then make them do very strange things and then I turn them back into non-numbers. Mostly, though, I try to trick people who paid money to know things they don't really want to know to know the things they don't really want to know.
You?
Something something tree storm
(If I can't see this photo posted in my timeline, then it didn't post, right? I'm not spamming people with the same photo over and over?)
I've never lost my love for taking the kinds of photos that first-year photography students probably take. Which probably means I'll never be a pro photographer, but after two decades in a completely different branch of academia I think that was already pretty obvious.
She is (almost) all the reasons.
Fellow academics:
A colleague is being pressured (by her dean and chair) to support this list of items as mandatory criteria in a "collegiality" requirement for tenure & promotion.
It's a dumpster fire naked monkey nightmare of a policy, tailored to encourage abusive administration and hostile work environments.
I highlighted some of the most ridiculous parts. Imagining the way some colleagues or admins would interpret all the undocumentable judgment-call elements... ::shudder::
Joe Versus The Volcano Day!
"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you"
This is definitely one of the fancier graphs I've done using ggplot2. Made it for a report for a client agency.
I got to use multiple lines, points, error bars, and facets. I learned tricks for rotating, resizing, zooming, etc.
None of that compared to the days of data munging this required, so... ddplyr for the win. Thanks, Hadley Wickham!
I'm feeling accomplished.
😅
Dexter. Photo by 5-year-old Sam.
I'm going to post pictures of my #deadcat until I feel better (circa 2023) or run out of photos.
He was the best cat. He had lots of toes--seven on each front paw. After meeting him it was impossible to truly respect the feet of other cats. I'd think, "What are those, tiny joke feet? How many toes do you have on each paw, FOUR? How do you wrap your paw all the way around your human's finger? Are you even a real cat?"
Dexter (2006-2017)
Dexter cuddling with, let's say, a #mastodon.
Dexter (2005/06 - April 2017)
Fuck fuck fuck
My cat is dying. It was a bad tooth. He got worse waiting for surgery. Now it's probably cancer. Fluid in his lungs. Maybe order more tests, while he spends the weekend in a cage in a clinic an hour away and maybe dies alone. Or euthanize him today.
My daughter will be destroyed. She's five. He's her brother.
I am destroyed. I rescued him from dumpsters 10 years ago. He's my witness and companion. He is me in animal form, warts and all. I've never loved an animal this much.
Now that I am a parent I have questions about kindergarten homework.
My 5-year-old's movie poster for A Bug's Life.
#BetterThanTheOriginal
Here's my cat doing his best Smaug impression. Yes, it's just some wooden disc toys he decided to sleep on, but go with it.
OK seriously I ave to go to bed now, but this place is so cool I wanted to binge on uploading photos before my schedule eats me for a few more days.
Here's my friend J in about 1999 or 2000, complete with spots from my darkroom technique that did not exactly stand the test of time.
