It’s been too long since the last recap! I’ve been super busy. I’ll try to compress three weeks into this one post, and apologies if it runs a little long. ...

Productionizing machine learning/AI/data science is a challenge. Not only are the outputs of machine-learning algorithms often compiled artifacts that need to be incorporated into existing production services, the languages and techniques used to develop these models are usually very different than those used in building the actual service. In this post, I want to explore how the degrees of freedom in versioning machine learning systems poses a unique challenge. I'll identify four key axes on which machine learning systems have a notion of version, along with some brief recommendations for how to simplify this a bit. ...

This week was wild! I had settled in for a nice week of getting some progress done on various work, extracurricular, and life things, and instead I ended up traveling to Köln on very short notice for half of the week. I really like Köln a lot, so I was happy to go. The city reminds me of Portland in a way, and I like working from my company’s office there. Because of that trip, I once again did not accomplish as much on personal tasks as I wanted. Alas. ...

The time always goes so fast. This week was exceptionally productive and yet I still feel like I didn’t check enough off of my goals. Mentally, I’ve been exhausted. But I managed to clear some major stressors off my plate this week. I finished a piece on the Proud Boys that was long overdue and I needed to get it done. I gave a presentation at work recapping my most recent project, and I finished some slides for an upcoming internal work conference. I also got major work done on First Vigil, finishing some to-dos, like adding a writeup on the Dylann Roof violent fandom. You didn’t really need that sentence. No one needed that sentence. I can’t believe I had to write it. Nevertheless, some interesting things worth sharing this week. ...

Revisiting some old works on the alarming murder rate of transgender people, particularly Black transgender women, has caused me to want to revisit some analysis on what the murder rate would look like in proportion to the cisgender white male population in the US. ...

This was the first full week of the year, so I get the sense that “back to work” was the theme of many people’s lives. For me, it also marked my return to Berlin, and with that came an exceptional amount of busywork. I’m only here for a short time before heading off to my next project for a bit, but I wanted to get some things in place this week. Between running errands and meeting up with friends whom I hadn’t seen in weeks, I hardly had time to breathe. I didn’t get as much done as I’d like, but given how busy I was, I am shocked by how much I accomplished. ...