Kirsten Lum

Hey bsky — thank you for all the follows. I talk about machine learning, analytics, problems with data management (and what my team is doing to fix it), with a sprinkle of “why relational data is still the most important data.” Looking to follow the curious and the courageous. 👋

Trying to make each and every transform efficient in the micro leads to inefficiencies in maintenance in the macro

Currently solving a thousand dynamic problems (watching Peppa Pig)

Life by 1000 kindnesses

It’s always easiest to take the position that something is unsolvable, because it puts the burden on the other person to provide a solution. But you can’t be wrong too many times before no one wants to work with you anymore.

Woman culture is interesting and awesome.

One thing I like about this place is how folks list the company they work for in their bio. Look at us. We’re incredible. All of us with our lives and lil jobs

Me: *fills myself up with delicious, nutritious food* My body: Thanks, now time for a little treat

Know your triggers, and have a plan for how to cope with their effects in a healthy way

I love when Instacart suggests wines to pair with the string cheese I just added to my cart.

Don’t think of it as whether the data has error or not. Most of the time it will. Think of it as whether the error in the data will cause you to make a different decision than if the data was perfectly clean. Most of the time it won’t.

Conversely, database tools should offer some affordance for enforcing correct joins, especially in cases where identifiers are not unique in this way. But they don’t! Inexplicable to me.

And all the cloud platform maxxers were like

One of the biggest things I learned this year is there are several things you can do with your body to activate debug mode on your mind. They’re so simple, the mind generally won’t put up much resistance to doing them. But in order for it to work, you have a template for a healthy mind to install.

Identifiers which are only unique within another identifier’s scope (e.g., product IDs that are only unique within their category) are the submarine screen doors of data.

3 year-old: This is a special coffee. It’s called — juice! Do you want to try some?

Defining a sustainable business optimization metric that is not dollars is extremely hard.

When something is going wrong, try skipping over the, “Why is this happening?” phase, and going straight to the, “What would happen if…” phase. Not only is the problem usually solved faster, you often learn the why in the process.

Because all data is either a snapshot of reality or a proposal for how to categorize and describe it (aka facts and dimensions)

Merry Christmas to all those who don’t celebrate but would still welcome sincere wishes for their peace and flourishing.

All I want for Christmas is uuuuuniversally unique identifiers instead of incrementing integers!

Don’t ask me to make a “quick spreadsheet” for someone because I’m going to use the full might of my Excel skills and it’ll look better than everyone else’s lol

Like making me play flawless Stravinsky on my MX Keys

What is your biggest database design pet peeve and why is it camel-cased table and column names?

At that age when I like very few Things more than I like having fewer Things