Data analysis, photography, and the occasional thought.
There are no new features in eeptools 1.3.0, and that is the point. After more than a decade and a quarter-million downloads, I'm putting the package officially into long-term support — a maintenance phase of deliberate deprecation that ends with a 2.0 release pared down to only what's still uniquely useful for education data.
In the "hellstrip", aptly named, between our sidewalk and the street, Hannah managed to grow these beautiful flowers. Taking the macro lens out for a walk through the garden this evening really paid off!
Jared KnowlesThinking about going back to posting a picture a day. For awhile it was a good ritual to keep me connected to my photography even when I wasn’t shooting, and to help me be a little more reflective about what pictures worked or didn’t and curate my own taste more. I need to do the same with my writing! But one step at a time!
https://www.markround.com/blog/2026/06/17/25-its-only-when-you-look-back/ →
This is a fun retrospective on technology. It’s good to stop amid the hype and hyperbole of the tech industry and take the wider view. Humbling and inspiring and grounding.
Jared KnowlesScience, of any kind, is so hard to get right. It is really hard to explain that 99.9% of all the work in science is just finding different ways that you are wrong!
Bedrock Gardens in New Hampshire is a delightful blend of garden and sculpture park. Worth a visit!
https://niccrane.com/posts/ai-open-source-contribution/ →
An awesome well thought out and detailed way to approach using AI assisted coding agents to give back to open source projects in a way that is pro-social. The key - start small and participate! Great advice.
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/choosing-to-stay-human →
Getting around to reading this and struck by the excellent language of surrender and choice. I am tempted to replace my writing with AI because it is hard for me and I’m not great at it, but I know the only way to get better is to suffer from through. I feel no problem farming out many coding chores to AI because I know what needs to be done and it is an issue of volume, not accuracy or novelty. Still, it’s an evolving dialogue in my work!
This article is talking about hundreds of thousands of armed drones, some autonomous, some not. A truly chilling way in which the future is already here.
Caught this rainbow tonight over Boston while out for friends! Summer city evening biking for the win!
https://blog.stdlib.io/ai-and-the-invisible-newcomer-in-open-source/ →
This is a great quick read thinking about what the impact on open source software communities has been and will be when contributing code is easier but also less necessary. Helpful as a mirror to think about my own engagement with open source in the past and moving forward. How can I be a more intentional and productive contributor, not just a consumer?
https://www.anthropic.com/institute/recursive-self-improvement →
I get the criticism and resistance to AI, but its a fact that software is critical to modern life. What is happening to the cost and pace of software output now is revolutionary not evolutionary. This is a well-written explanation, with interesting evidence, of the implications this has on the pace of change in fields where software matters. It mirrors my own experience; AI does not eliminate bottlenecks, it moves them, and it is not well suited to solve those new bottlenecks - like judgment.
Jared Knowles“Our chief weapons will be better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from squalor and misery and unemployment.” ~ Lyndon B. Johnson (from Caro’s biography)
Was out late last night in Boston and caught this imperfect shot of the moon over Copley Square. The Montana kid in me can still be surprised I live here!
https://www.pymc-labs.com/blog-posts/forecasting-the-2026-world-cup-group-stage →
I really enjoyed this thoughtful and detailed description of how to do ELO-style team head to head results forecasting and structure it within the World Cup tournament format. I think head to head forecasting has wider applicability in social science…
Jared KnowlesI love riding my bike in Boston to get around. But it is radicalizing. You encounter a hundred little frictions and you see why infrastructure is hard. And you pine for universal design. A city that works for all of us is better for all of us!
Jared KnowlesSpent some time today pulling all my “private” code repositories from GitHub and self-archiving them on my self-hosted Gitea instance. I should have done it awhile ago - private is no longer private on GitHub. Feels good to continue the liberation.
New England Summer Reservoir View
We hiked to the top of Tower Hill within the Tower Hill Botanical Garden in central Massachusetts and were treated to this wonderful summer scene.
Ms. Rachel is truly inspiring to me. Refusing to let children in immigration detention go unheard and unseen. She is using her profile and image so effectively and with such empathy and love. Truly powerful.
Jared KnowlesThe new Olivia Rodrigo album out today, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, is really good. I’m not sure I’m the audience she’s going for so I hope it still does well - but it is just a great listen, perfect for a summer drive.
Jared KnowlesI am in sports watching nirvana with a great NBA finals, the World Cup starting, and the Stanley Cup Finals with two teams I don’t love, but playing at an incredible pace.
I took this selfie in Butte Montana while visiting my mom. I thought the new jacket and new sunglasses are a fitting way to reintroduce myself to the world via my new website. Hello!
This is the self-hosted backend I am using to syndicate my posts across my social media accounts - it is super easy to set up and incredibly well documented.
Jared KnowlesNew website is live and I am so happy about it! Lots of work to get here, but the post once, syndicate everywhere workflow is great, and having it independently operating on my own infrastructure feels good!
One of the only memorials to a non-military non-first responder worker I have seen in the US.
I think the folks at Lander Analytics do really interesting cutting edge work and share a generous amount of what they learn. My own experience using a MacStudio for multiple side by side models is similar, but I need to look into these time series models more!
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7309921/2026/06/09/world-cup-argentina-kansas-city-jail/ →
They raised taxes to pay for a temporary jail for the World Cup and it won’t be ready to open until the tournament is over. There’s always a jail angle.
https://hopeisapraxis.substack.com/p/welcome?r=8jf5yw&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true →
My former colleague at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Dr. Carl Bryan, has launched a newsletter and the list of topics sound like everything I love:
• Democracy and democratic participation • Education policy and public schools • School boards and local governance • Critical theory and public life • Queer liberation and belonging • Humanization, resistance, and public institutions • Current events viewed through questions of power and participation
Can’t wait to follow along
I appreciate the technical content being put out by Lander Analytics. Consistently great stuff, on the cutting edge, thoughtfully presented. I use DuckDB all the time and read the official post about the Quack protocol, but this article made some practical recommendations that clicked for me.