Sam's Digital Forest

Reflections, notes, resources, and ideas on things that currently interest me. Updated monthly: Archive. Last Updated: May 2026.

Things I Am Currently Thinking About

LLMs As the ability of LLMs expand and the truly novel things they are accomplishing are publicized seemingly each new day (see my links on my blog for this month), I am forced to update my priors about how and how often I should be incorporating them in my own life. I have found LLMs helpful for a variety of tasks, but I think that it is necessary to put personal limits on their use case for a number of reasons -- privacy, pedagogy, mission critical paths. I am going reflect on this more over the upcoming month.
Pricing Fair Odds (2x) I haven't had as much time to work on this as I would have liked, so continuing on here! I have been on a deep dive about how to assess the fair odds of events, specifically with regard to sports betting. I am working on a blog post on this subject and have been independently researching how to better price correlation. Pricing correlation is very important for the massively popular bet type "Same Game Parlays". A good method of doing this for certain markets could lead to a nice edge.

Smoker We are finally at the time of year where we are enjoying some beautiful weather in New England. It is the perfect time of year for having people over, enjoying some refreshing beverages and some great food. I recently acquired a Traeger smoker, and have been overjoyed with the meats I have been able to prepare using it. So far I made delicious turkey, chicken, and steak. I am looking forward to trying pork, ribs, and brisket.