January 13, 2023 Night
Good evening! Cloudy and 33 degrees for the evening walk in Delmar. β There is a northwest breeze at 10 mph. π. The skies will clear Sunday around 4 am.
Survived Friday the 13th π» though I hardly noticed it. Busy at the end of the day. Rain stopped fairly early, got in 18k steps or eight miles for the day.
The work week has come and gone, πΌ it’s a three day weekend ahead. I won’t say it was an exceptional week but busy though most days I got home at the normal time. Thursday was wet. Friday morning at work was quiet for a while than it got busy.
Just out for the evening walk πΆ after doing some cleaning and packing around the apartment. Toilet π½ needed a good scrub, as did the sink, counter tops and kitchen floor. I’m dirty, everything I own is dirty and worn but I kind of like the life. Maybe that’s why I idolize farming so much, especially the ramshackle, rundown farms in the hills. π Maybe tomorrow when I get out of town I can see some of them.
Getting ready to head out of town for a few nights of winter camping and hiking. βΊ I still haven’t fully decided how far I want to head from home. Tomorrow night will be cold but Sunday and Kings day pretty nice. I’ll bring the microspikes but won’t need the skis due to a lack of snow basically everywhere except for the Adirondacks.
I’m just happy π to be getting away. I just feel so trapped living in the city. Earlier in the week, one of colleagues from high school wanted to know when I planned to move back into the hills. β° It’s a question I ask myself a lot. At the same time I keep hearing stories about people falling over and dying from heart attacks in their 40s and 50s.
Tonight will be cloudy β, with a low of 27 degrees at 5am. 11 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 18th. North wind around 10 mph. In 2022, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 6 degrees. The record low of -24 occurred back in 1957.
Tonight will have a Last Quarter π Moon with 59% illuminated. The moon will rise at 11:34 pm. The darkest hour is at 12:05 am, followed by dawn at 6:53 am, and sun starting to rise at 7:24 am in the east-southeast (119Β°) and last for 3 minutes and 19 seconds. Sunrise is 23 seconds earlier than yesterday. π The golden hour ends at 8:09 am with sun in the southeast (127Β°). Tonight will have 14 hours and 35 minutes of darkness, a decrease of one minute and 33 seconds over last night.
Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy π₯, with a high of 33 degrees at 2pm. Typical for this time of year. North wind 10 to 13 mph. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 32 degrees. The record high of 66 was set in 1932. 9.0 inches of snow fell back in 1999.β
I keep thinking about Mission Fifty, π€ and thinking who I want to be in ten years. π I often always took the easy way out, the slow and steady path. π’ I have the corner office, the desk in a private office with the brass lamp that overlooks the Capitol and the Hudson River and several garbage dumps and smoke stacks. But there is still so much wild country out there I’ve never explored. Maybe though I’m waiting too long to take the next step. But if I keep walking πΆ, try to eat healthier and save more π΅ I can build a better tomorrow.
In four weeks on February 10 the sun will be setting in the west-southwest (251Β°) at 5:21 pm,π which is 35 minutes and 33 seconds later then tonight. In 2021 on that day, we had partly cloudy, snow showers and temperatures between 25 and 12 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 35 and 16 degrees. The record high of 53 degrees was set back in 1955.
Looking ahead, tommorow is , Clean Your Computer Day π§Ή is in 4 weeks, 5:30 PM Sunset π is in 5 weeks, 5:30 PM Sunset π is in 5 weeks, St. Patrick’s Day π is in 9 weeks, 7:30 PM Sunset π is in 12 weeks, Cinco de Mayo π€ is in 16 weeks, National Nude Day π± is in 26 weeks, Average High 70 π is in 33 weeks, September π is in 33 weeks, Labor Day Weekend Begins π¨βπ is in 33 weeks, Autumn π is in 36 weeks, Average Night Below Freezing π is in 10 months, Buy Nothing Day ποΈ is in 45 weeks, December π is in 46 weeks, Bill of Rights Day π is in 48 weeks and Days are Getting Longer βοΈ is in 49 weeks.
After Automats Died in New York, They Flourished in the Netherlands – Gastro Obscura
Bayisian Probability π²
Bayisian Probability π²
The past few weeks I’ve been reading a lot about statistics and probability. I read a book called Statistics for Dummies whose audience was clearly High Schoolers and I struggled through parts of it like I did many parts of Pre Calculus in High School and Elementary Statistics in College. I get the math but the symbols always throw me off. I can do quadratic equations but they aren’t my favorite.
Then I started to read Nate Silvers’ The Signal and the Noise. Much easier read for me, and more fascinating as it looked at real life statistics. It’s easy to be mislead by incomplete data and bias, and either underweighting or overweightingaaaa priors. But using Bayisian Probability can help one overcome some of the current bias by looking back over time. Things usually continue in their current fashion and extremes ultimately revert to the means.
It really is good to keep the past in mind when thinking the future. Past success can be built on. Risk exists but can be minimized and smoothed out over time. If yesterday was good, today is better than chances are good that tomorrow will be even better than today.
I’ve long been interested in risk management and seeing the world not through the fearful panicking nature of the news media, afraid of today and not considering long term structural risk and rewards. I’m a libertarian so I tend to prefer more risk to human life and well being in exchange for more human freedom. Caution can be warranted but it shouldn’t come at the cost of human freedom and dignity.
But my real interest in statistics today is more practical – I have powerful analytical tools like R Studio and access to a remarkable amount of open data that can better explain the world around me, if only I know and apply proper statistical analysis to it. I’m no Quant or statistician and have little interest in returning to formal education but I know there is much I can learn myself.