Not leaving the house much these days (due to social distancing and also insane heat in NYC right now) means I've got some time to kill that I'd like to spend productively.

I took MIT 6.00.2x: Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science a few years back when I was refreshing my Python skills. I think it's been updated a bit since then. It was a high quality course and I enjoyed it, though there are so many Python-related courses these days, I can't guarantee it's the best.

I'm currently taking:

1. Model Thinking on Coursera from the University of Michigan. I don't know where I saw this recommended (maybe on Tildes or Hacker News?) but it's quite good so far. Scott Page teaches about how to use various models (mental models, computational ones, etc.) for breaking down and analyzing various problems and systems. I've only just started but I quite like it.

2. Testing and Monitoring Machine Learning Model Deployments on Udemy. Taking this along with a few coworkers since it's relevant to what I do. Only just starting but appears to be quite good and works through a well-documented example project on Github.

I've also come across a few that seem like they might be good courses for the future:

• Bayesian Methods for Hackers
• Probalistic graphical models on Coursera (3-part sequence, not free)
• Computational probability and inference

Now your turn: what have you taken? What did you like or not like, and why? What do you want to take?

I love humanities and philosophy in particular. I'm also a layman in both counts. Nevertheless, sometimes I wanna post some personal/informal essays on these subjects, but I have no idea if my fellow Tilderinos have any interest in those at all.

So here are as some subjects I have in mind, please tell if you're interested in of those or anything relatead:

• The Philosohy of Love
• Possibile World Semantics
• Philosophical zombies
• Albert Camus
• The Kyoto School
• The Paradox of Fiction
• The Paradox of Suspense
• Aristotle's Rhetoric
• Informal Logic
• John Austin
• Speech Acts
• Fallacies

The idea is not to make anything resemble a professional take of these subjects, but rather informal commentaries that might serve as starting points for interesting discussions.

Sadly, I don' have the knowledge or disposition to comment on subjects that are typically popular on Tildes, such as those more directedly related to computer science and artificial intelligence.

In terms of reference, I won't go much beyond the refereed links, which are reasonably exhaustive for the purposes of this project. The periodicity will be once every two months (counting starts tomorrow), with the first post that comes in next Septemper 16, 2020 (Monday). 60 days from now. Because of that, it wil be probably long form (no quarantees!).

This would come in addition to my project of going through each informal fallacies in the Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments, but I don't have any concrete plans for that now.

In any case, these things take time and effort, and I'll only then if and only if you guys and girls demonstrate interest. So please be vocal!

I'll choose the next subject of discussion base on public interest.

Admittedly that's 90 years of history but I've always wondered about what was the politics of the US back then, because I've never really known about them.

The parts I'm most interested in are:

Why did it take until 1832 for the state legislatures to reach a consensus on how to elect people to the electoral college? I know states' rights are a big theme in US politics, but it seems really strange that it would take them 55 years to figure out how to pick the president, even if early on, that role was a lot less powerful.

Why were there so many parties before the US settled on the Democratic and Republican parties (although they have changed plentifully thanks to the US's 2-party political system where everyone needs to bundle up into 2 large coalitions or risk turning the US into a 1-party state.)

Why did they switch so often? From my count there are:

4 main parties being:

The Democratic-Republicans vs the federalists

The Whigs and National Republicans vs the (Jacksonian) Democrats

3 3rd parties being:

The anti-masonic party

The know nothing party/cult according to wiki apparently

The free soil/anti-slavery party

(Also in 1820 there was effectively no election, in 1824, 4 people of the same party all ran for president at once, in 1836 the same thing happened and 4 Whigs ran at once, but with Democratic opposition and 3 actually won votes while one just coasted off south Carolina. Why?)

Why were there so many large parties and what were all these parties about?

I tend to watch AlternateHistoryHub, WhatIfAlthist and occasionally Monsieur Z (but less so since the guy somehow got a far-right audience) so I've always been interested in the idea of alternate history.

However, there's more than that. There are books and writers (I.E Harry turtledove), 3 subreddits (r/historywhatif, r/historicalwhatif and r/alternatehistory), many games (HOI I, II, III and IV, civ 1-6, Vicky 1-3, etc), a forum and according to Wikipedia, people have been speculating about history since before the year 0.

So what do you think of it?