James King

James King

@jamesking.io

Digital product designer from London. Founder at https://science-practice.com and co-founder at https://fora.health. Contributor to the Ergodicity Economics research community. https://jamesking.io

86 followers146 following116 posts

James King reposted

Observable
@observablehq.com

Great post; changes how I look at penguins, their measurement, and Simpson’s paradox itself. @fil.rezo.net reproduced it in a notebook with JavaScript and Plot. observablehq.com/@fil/penguin...

observablehq.comIdentify penguins by bill shapeAn Observable notebook by Fil
Michael Friendly@datavisfriendly.bsky.social

#dataviz #stats #rstats New blog post: Thinking about Penguin Variables Bill length & depth show Simpson's paradox. Re-expressed as size (L×D) and shape (L/D), it vanishes: same data, rotated 45°, a simpler story. friendly.github.io/blog/posts/2...

James King reposted

Alex Warth
@alexwarth.bsky.social

Everyone’s seen the Sketchpad demo. Few understand how it actually works. I reimplemented Sketchpad from scratch, and I’m making short videos that recreate Sutherland’s demos and explain how they work. The first 8 are up — from drawing a line to the famous rivet. Link below 👇

James King
@jamesking.io

☺️

Observable@observablehq.com

Thanks again to James for his bookmarklet! Grateful to have been able to point people to it over the last few weeks. Grateful for people finding crafty ways around our gaps. 🫡

James King
@jamesking.io

Great video overview of the current state of our understanding of how multicellularity evolved. Video is very good - made with Claude.

Will Ratcliff@wcratcliff.bsky.social

Out today in @nature.com: our review on how single cells evolve into multicellular organisms. With Ozan Bozdag, @kaitong25.bsky.social, Peter Yunker, and @matthewherron.bsky.social. rdcu.be/9ZuiKow9twKa For an overview, check out the video below.

James King
@jamesking.io

Just made my own glanceable podcast feed using Alex’s idea. Here is a YouTube lecture on general relativity that is converted to an MP3 playing on my lockscreen (via Overcast). I can listen to the lecture and glance at the black board when needed.

James King@jamesking.io

Great idea for making "glanceable" podcasts. Perfect medium for listening to recorded lectures with slides. alexwlchan.net/2026/glancec...

alexwlchan.netAbusing ID3 chapters to turn videos into glanceable podcastsInserting a chapter with artwork every few seconds turns an MP3 file into an approximation of a video file. I can listen to videos as audio-first, and glance at my lock screen if I need some visual co...
James King
@jamesking.io

Just updated this to work with the newly launched @observablehq.com.

James King@jamesking.io

I am sure that @observablehq.com will add this feature soon, but until then… I made a tool that exports Observable Notebooks 2.0 documents from the new Observable site. Useful for editing locally in Observable Desktop. tools.jamesking.io/observable-n...

James King reposted

Tom MacWright
@macwright.com

observable's community is just stacked with talent

Observable@observablehq.com

Simulation of binary black holes. Original concept by Jeremy Schnittman and Brian P. Powell svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13831 Relativistic GLSL ray-tracing notebook by @nxrix.bsky.social observablehq.com/@nxrix/binar... Starfield & orbit controls by @laotzunami.bsky.social observablehq.com/d/cca8d2013f...

James King reposted

Observable
@observablehq.com

We’ve been rebuilding the editor atop the foundation of Notebook Kit and portable files in an open format. You can’t necessarily tell yet, since there’s no button… but thanks to James for seeing it! See also @nxrix.bsky.social’s remarkable depicted notebook: new.observablehq.com/@nxrix/binar...

James King@jamesking.io

I am sure that @observablehq.com will add this feature soon, but until then… I made a tool that exports Observable Notebooks 2.0 documents from the new Observable site. Useful for editing locally in Observable Desktop. tools.jamesking.io/observable-n...

James King
@jamesking.io

Just finished reading the 20th anniversary edition of Fortune’s Formula by William Poundstone. It is such a good book. The new edition has an extra part, titled Ergodicity, which covers the work of Ole Peters and others.

James King
@jamesking.io

The book tells the story of the Kelly Criterion, an application of information theory to the domains of gambling and economics. It is enormously entertaining! The contents page gives a flavour: long-running intellectual feuds interwoven with gambling schemes. It would make a great movie.

James King
@jamesking.io

Poundstone is really good at exposition of mathematical concepts. I really like this description of ergodicity (pic, with alt text included). The book is chock full of efficient explanations like this. Do read the book!

James King reposted

Ole Peters
@opeters.bsky.social

If you’re interested in — I was going to say ergodicity, then I thought ‘decisions theory’, and now I’m settling on — life?, have a look at the 20th anniversary edition of William Poundstone’s classic Fortune’s Formula. It has a brand new part about the rise of ergodicity economics.

James King reposted

Ole Peters
@opeters.bsky.social

Interesting exercise: use ergodicity economics to determine the conditions under which the answers are rational.

YouGov@yougov.co.uk

If you had a choice between instantly receiving £50,000 or a 50% chance to win £1m, which would you pick? £50,000: 73% 50/50 chance of winning £1m: 21% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

James King reposted

Observable
@observablehq.com

Here @fil.rezo.net reproduces @climatecasino.net’s chart, using warped gridlines to represent both the absolute temperature and the deviation from the historical mean for each day of the year. new.observablehq.com/@fil/godzill...

Prof. Eliot Jacobson@climatecasino.net

Breaking News! Code: y-axis alert. Nino 3.4 SST is now up to 3.63 SD above the 1991-2020 baseline, about 1-in-7000 in the absence of anthropogenic warming. There's not enough room in a single post to express just how crazy this is. Please read: climatecasino.substack.com/p/some-monst...