Richard Meyer-Eppler
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r-meyereppler.bsky.social
Richard Meyer-Eppler
@r-meyereppler.bsky.social
100 followers 470 following 35 posts
Data Analyst looking at student statistics. Oracle SQL and IBM Cognos Analytics at work, #rstats for dataviz, parameterized reporting and everything else. Iaido instructor at www.iaido-dortmund.de. Likes orderly things.
Posts Replies Media Videos
r-meyereppler.bsky.social
Question on #rayshader #rstats: I want to combine several images created with rayshader::render_highquality. I have complex images that will end up in print. This will only look good if I can get rid of each image's background. How to do that despite Monte Carlo noise?
Two images created with rayshader::render_highquality side by side. One has no shadows and a uniform background, the other has shadows and Monte Carlo noise.
November 18, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
helenasteinhaus.bsky.social
Kann einfach nicht deren Ernst sein, dass weiter ein Staatsakt aus diesem Randphänomen gemacht wird, während durch Steuerhinterziehung 200 MILLIARDEN € im Jahr futsch gehen und der Ex-Kanzler damit durchkommt, sich in Zusammenhang mit Cum-Ex an nix zu erinnern.
www.deutschlandfunk.de/bas-kuendigt...
Missbrauch von Sozialleistungen - Bas kündigt bessere Vernetzung von Behörden und Strafrechts-Änderung an
Um Missbrauch von Sozialleistungen wirksamer bekämpfen zu können strebt Bundesarbeitsministerin Bas eine bessere Vernetzung von Behörden an.
www.deutschlandfunk.de
October 28, 2025 at 7:50 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
fragdenstaat.de
Die Bundesregierung streicht das Bürgergeld, treibt den Sozialabbau voran – und steckt gleichzeitig Millionen in Abschiebeflüge. Doch der Staat hält die Details geheim: Weil die Bundespolizei uns genaue Zahlen verweigert, klagen wir.
fragdenstaat.de/artikel/exkl...
Teure Symbolpolitik: Charter-Abschiebeflüge
Deutschland mietet ganze Flugzeuge, um Menschen abzuschieben. Das soll Härte in der Asylpolitik demonstrieren – und bringt enorme Ausgaben mit sich. Weil der Staat Details geheim hält, verklagen wir i...
fragdenstaat.de
October 20, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
fragdenstaat.de
In der PK zum Verfassungsschutzbericht 2024 am 10. Juni hat Innenminister Dobrindt Rechtsextremismus ausgespart – und mit verzogenen Grafiken Linksextremismus aufgebauscht. Ein interner Sprechzettel zeigt: Das war kein Versehen, sondern eine bewusste Entscheidung.

fragdenstaat.de/artikel/die-...
Bundesinnenminister Dobrindt: Sag es!
Relativiert der Bundesinnenminister die Gefahr durch Rechtsextremismus? Ein neues Dokument legt nahe: Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) tut sich schwer, das Offensichtliche in Worte zu fassen.
fragdenstaat.de
July 3, 2025 at 7:42 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
keithfitzgerald.bsky.social
Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.
June 26, 2025 at 4:28 PM
r-meyereppler.bsky.social
💯! To me, this is one of the main points of confusion in macro, and it comes up again, and again, and again. It is really strange to see all the praise for Wolf-Pettis. I think these are fundamental conceptual errors and not reasonable disagreements in assumptions.
jomichell.bsky.social Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · Jun 24
There are basic but fundamental errors at the heart of the Wolf-Pettis thesis. Most importantly, there is a misunderstanding of the meaning and definition of 'saving'. 1/
tomashirstecon.bsky.social Tomas Hirst @tomashirstecon.bsky.social · Jun 24
Wolf just casually chucking around the idea of the global reserve currency provider raising capital controls *in the interest of financial stability*. Is it April 1st already? on.ft.com/3ZLo1zB
June 25, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
helenasteinhaus.bsky.social
Wenn eine Bundesministerin faktenfrei von mafiösem Bürgergeldbetrug fabuliert, dann ist das kein Kampf gegen Missbrauch, sondern dann ist es ein Frontalangriff auf die Würde von armutsbetroffenen Menschen und Populismus mit sozialdemokratischem Etikett. Das Armenbashing muss ein Ende haben!
June 23, 2025 at 10:56 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
frank.computer
Lisa's work has probably been my most-shared resources (not including accessibility stuff) over the years. Lisa repeatedly has put out some of the best and most-helpful guides out there for designing data visualizations.
lisacmuth.bsky.social Lisa Charlotte Muth @lisacmuth.bsky.social · Jun 18
Wow! It's a great honor to receive this Information is Beautiful Award.

Thanks to @datawrapper.de for letting me inspire people. And thanks to everyone else who's contributing to the lovely #dataviz community!

Find all #IIBAwards winners here: www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/news/680-ann...
Picture of me and the text "Impactful Community Leader, Lisa Charlotte Muth, Datawrapper" below and the text "Information is Beautiful Awards 2024 Winner" in a badge.
June 18, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
michlalbrt.bsky.social
Der geschätzte Schaden durch Sozialbetrug beim Bürgergeld beträgt rund 270 Millionen Euro pro Jahr, durch Steuerbetrug 100 Milliarden.

Man fragt sich langsam, ob diese Regierung willens oder in der Lage ist, reale Probleme zu lösen, statt nur Scheinproblemen nachzujagen.
Bärbel Bas spricht von »mafiösen Strukturen« bei Bürgergeld-Empfängern
Arbeitsministerin Bärbel Bas will mit einem besseren Datenaustausch den Missbrauch von Sozialleistungen bekämpfen. »Es gibt Menschen, die werden in einem Van abgeholt und als Tagelöhner ausgebeutet«, ...
www.spiegel.de
June 4, 2025 at 5:38 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
rand0mgen.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Opinion | To Understand Global Migration, You Have to See It First (Gift Article)
These estimates, drawn from the location data of three billion Facebook users, provide a view of human migration in extraordinary detail.
www.nytimes.com
April 18, 2025 at 4:06 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
benbraun.bsky.social
Time really is a circle. Leveraged hedge funds make billions; bets blow up; dash for cash; the Fed steps in; repeat. Here's what I wrote four years ago about central banks as guarantors of this unjust and inefficient (some might say: stupid) system.
benjaminbraun.org/assets/pubs/...
Consider the turmoil, in late 2019, in the US repo market, wherefinancial firms borrow and lend cash against securities, pledged as col-lateral. A major cause of this turmoil was liquidity demand from hedgeand private equity funds. These funds are typically levered — in ordermaximize their returns, they borrow large sums in the shadow bankingsystem, often pledging the assets they acquire as collateral. In order tostabilize the repo market, the Federal Reserve increased its balance sheetby 10 percent, or USD 400 billion, between September 2019 and Janu-ary 2020. The question “What is the social value of levered hedge fundsand private equity buyouts?” was not asked.The same pattern recurred — on a much larger scale — in the wakeof the COVID outbreak in early 2020. In order to prevent the economicshock caused by the pandemic from leading to another systemic financialcrisis, central banks across the world chose to backstop not only banksbut also the broader shadow banking system. The most audacious meas-ures — in both size and scope — have been implemented by the Fed-eral Reserve. By purchasing so-called “junk bonds” — bonds issued bycorporate debtors with lower credit ratings — the Federal Reserve againbackstopped private equity funds, which routinely transfer debt to theirbuyout targets, forcing the latter to issue junk bonds. By backstopping both the money market and the (high-risk) capital market, the FederalReserve effectively protects both the liability side and the asset side oflevered investors’ balance sheets.In other words, the Federal Reserve ensures that the arsenal of themost predatory actors in the financial system is fully stocked and readyto be deployed — for further financializing currently distressed sectorsof the economy, such as elderly care. Shareholders understand — thestock price of firms such as Blackstone and Apollo bounced back spec-tacularly after the Federal Reserve announced its measures. Unless gov-ernments take swift and decisive action to curb the ability of hedge andprivate equity funds to gobble up assets, COVID will become a majormilestone in the long history of central bank-facilitated financialization.The upshot is that while central bank planning already exists, it iscurrently geared toward propping up a system in which the planning ofinvestment is in private hands. This system is both unfair and inefficient.Central banks have become the lenders of last resort for a manifestly un-sustainable status quo (Fontan, Claveau, and Dietsch 2016; Jacobs andKing 2016; Streeck 2014).
April 9, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
phdskat.org
This is a great list. As someone who has also been teaching the political economy of the green transition this term, a few additional resources I've found useful 🧵:
benbraun.bsky.social Benjamin Braun @benbraun.bsky.social · Mar 28
Teaching the political economy of the green transition this term, I used, and learned from, some amazing 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐬. A 🧵 on some of the best. Further suggestions are very welcome, I'll add them below.
March 29, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
benbraun.bsky.social
Teaching the political economy of the green transition this term, I used, and learned from, some amazing 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐬. A 🧵 on some of the best. Further suggestions are very welcome, I'll add them below.
March 28, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
javiercorrales.bsky.social
All my life I have studied democratization and autocratization. My 1st field trip was to newly democratic Argentina. I then added autocracies to my portfolio: Cuba, Ven, etc. I think I can recognize the stages of transition to authoritarianism. Here are the boxes Trump has already checked off.
February 16, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
chadloder.bsky.social
Musk has no technical skills whatsoever, but he wants to appear smart. So he takes bits of information like this, told to him by junior engineers, and regurgitates it to appear smart.

Musk did this with the Twitter stack and Twitter's senior architects called him out publicly, then he fired them.
donmoyn.bsky.social Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Feb 9
One of Musk's defining qualities is that he is a conspiracy theorist when it comes to government. He will see some ambiguous information or be presented with an easily debunked tale and he immediately believes the worst.
Musk saying social security enables massive fraud
February 9, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
schlawinerkreis.bsky.social
"Die grundrechtliche Brandmauer verläuft nicht nur in Abgrenzung zur AfD, sondern auch in Abgrenzung zu 1 grundrechtsfeindlichen Politik. Denn was nützt eigentl. die Brandmauer, wenn die Parteien hinter dieser quasi die Forderungen der AfD von vor 3 Jahren umsetzen?"

netzpolitik.org/2025/10-punk...
10-Punkte-Plan: Hardliner Habeck im Law-and-Order-Strudel
Demokratische Parteien befeuern mit ihrem Überbietungswettbewerb bei Migration und Sicherheit die rechte Diskurshegemonie. Auch die Grünen machen mit. Doch die Brandmauer verläuft nicht nur zwischen A...
netzpolitik.org
February 6, 2025 at 7:45 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
epopppp.bsky.social
The NYT asked me to write an op-ed on Musk and the Treasury and then took a pass. I hope it will still get read.
Personal Discretion Over the Treasury's Payments System Means the End of Democracy
If the Court and federal workers fail to stop Elon Musk, we are heading for authoritarianism.
www.liberalcurrents.com
February 4, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
timnitgebru.bsky.social
Friends, for something to be open source, we need to see

1. The data it was trained & evaluated on

2. The code

3. Model architecture

4. Model weights.

DeepSeek only gives 3, 4. And I'll see the day that anyone gives us #1 without being forced to do so, because all of them are stealing data.
January 29, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
amendlocke.bsky.social
Ted Chiang is one of the few sf writers who is wise.
lareviewofbooks.org/article/life...
Life Is More Than an Engineering Problem | Los Angeles Review of Books
Julien Crockett speaks with Ted Chiang about the search for a perfect language, the state of AI, and the future direction of technology.
lareviewofbooks.org
January 20, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
cosima.bsky.social
To all the #pyladies and #rladies out there - if you have a blog or a YouTube channel and want to be added, feel free to reach out! Your content will then be featured by the @pyladies-bot.bsky.social or @rladies-bot.bsky.social 🙌
cosima.bsky.social Cosima @cosima.bsky.social · Apr 23
The Awesome PyLadies' Blogs Repository is growing 🤩

I spent some evenings during the past weeks finding and reaching out to people (also for the Awesome R-Ladies' Blogs repository). It's so cool to see all the different blogs and feeds! 😍

(screenshot shows README of the repository)
November 21, 2024 at 4:42 AM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
mkonings.bsky.social
Very pleased to announce that The Bailout State is now available everywhere. Get a copy and find out why governments rescue banks, not people!
January 11, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
emilynordmann.bsky.social
I'm reading Ursula Le Guin's Steering the Craft and it's full of gems, even for nonfiction #AcademicSky writing.

"A skill is something you know how to do. Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art."
A skill is something you know how to do. Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art. There's luck in art. And there's the gift. You can't earn that. But you can learn skill, you can earn it. You can learn to deserve your gift. I'm not going to discuss writing as self-expression, as therapy, or as a spiritual adventure. It can be these things, but first of all - and in the end, too - it is an art, a craft, a making. And that is the joy of it. To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It's worth it.
January 10, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
epopppp.bsky.social
Please forgive a little earnest-posting.

I’m finding the start of 2025 kind of hard and while there are obvious reasons to dread what’s coming, I think it’s more than the new administration. A lot of my ground truths have been unsettled in a way that makes it hard to know what to do next.
January 3, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
douglasmack.bsky.social
My family is out for a few hours and unlike all the other times, THIS time I will manage to deep-clean the whole house, catch up on every email, create a perfect household budget, write all the posts I've been meaning to write, pitch 10 stories to major publications, take time for myself, run 10k,
December 29, 2024 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by Richard Meyer-Eppler
tylermw.com
🤔Problem: You like the idea of #AdventOfCode but you have tons of outstanding #GitHub issues!

🤗Solution: Install the below bookmarklet (copy code into the address field of a bookmark) and turn any GH issues page into an advent calendar!

Code: gist.github.com/tylermorganw...
#RStats #python #coding
December 3, 2024 at 4:42 AM