I’m currently with my parents for the weekend, and things have been really busy. As a result I haven’t had the time to write this post I’ve been turning over in my head; trust me, though, if we’re at all acquainted it’s worth the wait. I’ll be here until Sunday, after which I’ll be headed back to Chicago and should be able to give this post the thought it deserves. Tomorrow and Sunday, however, I’ll probably run shorter policy-related posts as I feel like I’ve focused a bit too much on communication recently.

After that, I start work! I’m really excited to use web2py on a formal basis and it’ll be my second MVC framework after Rails, so hopefully the relationship will be a beneficial one. I’ve also been looking forward to just working in general as I’ve been out of the job market for almost a year now. Starting to get the itch to do something actually productive, y’know?

In any case, here’s the links for today! Please look forward to the posts in the coming days.

Links

A status update for sk-learn - This is, in my opinion, one of the best machine learning libraries and toolkits out there. It’s true that R is incredibly flexible, but the ease with which you can begin using sk-learn and iterating rapidly just blows any alternatives out of the water for me. To hear that major additions are in the pipeline is great.

How to serve 150 free meals for less than 20 cents each - Bravo to Food not Bombs for doing this; this is exactly the sort of innovation and practice that we need to see happen more frequently if we’re to begin to reduce poverty.

The emergency room is not health insurance - Sarah Kliff does some excellent reporting on the limits of so-called “free healthcare”. The idea that the plight of the uninsured is mitigated significantly because of the federally-mandated obligations that hospitals have to provide a bare minimum of care always rung hollow to me, especially now that we’re hearing more frequently about “collection enforcement” picking up in hospitals.