Category: Misc

It was one of those nights when Daniel felt the weight of his existence pressing down on him. Everyone in his circle had conspired to make him feel small and insignificant, and he realized they had won. His guitar, a sunburst Telecaster, sat propped against the corner of his cluttered apartment, its wooden body glowing […]

The Unopened Letter   A soft thud echoed from the hallway. Marie looked up from her computer screen, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose. The mail had arrived. She sighed and went to the front door. Bills, advertisements, a postcard from some real estate agent—nothing unusual. But there was one letter that […]

In the Presence of Shadows   When Jacob first woke, the air in his bedroom felt thick, like a smothering weight pressing down on him. His eyes blinked open to the familiar shape of his bedside lamp, the faint glow of morning just barely filtering through the curtains. But there was something else. Someone was […]

The hierarchical cluster tree, or dendrogram, visualizes the relationships among 2023 MLB catchers based on their defensive statistics. As always, players who are closer together on the x-axis have similar defensive profiles, meaning their statistics in categories like putouts, assists, errors, and caught stealing percentage are more alike. The height of the horizontal lines (distance) […]

Twilight Embrace Roland stood on the edge of the pier, the salty sea breeze ruffling his thinning gray hair. The sunset cast a golden glow on the water, turning it into a shimmering mirror. He’d always loved this time of day, when the world seemed to slow down, the chaos of life pausing to catch […]

Steps Forward Sergio stood at the edge of his driveway, phone in hand, staring down the quiet, leaf-strewn road that led to the harbor. The late September air was cool, tinged with the smell of damp earth and the first hints of winter. Lake Erie was only three miles away, a place he’d gone a […]

A Crush, a Data Viz, and a Book Long Postponed I have a crush on a YouTuber. There, I said it. I hesitate because there is no chance I would ever approach her and “shoot my shot.”  She is probably half my age…maybe. She might be much younger. I am not delusional; even at my […]

I am broken…defeated. I fought the good fight, but I lost. Better people than me have experienced a worse fate.  The future I always had planned for myself is dead.  There is nothing I can do about it. As some of you know, I spent my best years at Harvard University. I was there for […]

The Greatest Tweet I am not a big social media guy.  I do have a Facebook page, but it is under a pen name.  I never visit it and don’t believe I have ever posted on it.  I don’t feel social media is necessary for me; if I have anything to say, I can speak […]

Datasaurus! Well…that is something. Buford Lister (personal communication) That is in the top seven of the coolest things I have ever seen. Warren Andrew Slay (personal communication) This post takes off where the last one (Anscombe’s Quartet) ended.  Anscombe had four data sets, whereas the mighty Datasaurus file has 13.  Yes, it is either a […]