Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

New viz 📊 published today for @urbaninstitute.bsky.social: Colleagues @wcurrangroome.bsky.social @andrewrumbach.bsky.social and team looked into the recent flooding in the Pacific Northwest and the challenges communities will face recovering, and we mapped the region. www.urban.org/urban-wire/a...

404 Media is making a print zine! About the surveillance technologies used by ICE. 16 pages, riso printed. Shipping early January. Features reworked versions of our best reporting and a few new things. We're very excited! And hope to do more if people like it: www.404media.co/404-media-is...

NEW — I put together a list of independent journalism subscriptions that would make great holiday gifts. From music to politics, astronomy to alcohol, tech to social justice, there’s something for [almost] everyone. Support indie media *and* surprise and delight your loved ones! My guide:

Hey today is the last @bandcamp.com Friday of the year. If you just posted your Spotify Wrapped this week, maybe consider buying one or two of your top albums and supporting those artists directly?

Ah man, hitting that "overwhelmingly positive" on steam less than 2 weeks after launch feels pretty good

NORCO is an awesome game. Highly recommend it. I played it a couple of years ago at this point and I still think about it often.

demonschool credits all 145 people who touched the game over the course of its multi-year dev cycle AND explains what exactly they contributed. the rest of the games industry, which commonly omits people from credits entirely, should be taking notes

This is a nice guide to music discovery sans algorithms, with shoutouts to @hearingthingsco.bsky.social, @afantano.bsky.social, @bandcamp.com, flowstate.fm, and other great sources of human-powered curation. I think the internet works best when it facilitates humans sharing things with each other!

Yo this game looks awesome

My new big visualization project is out: The Trans News Initiative, a collaboration between UM's School of Communication, the Trans Journalists Association, and Polygraph (The Pudding): transnewsinitiative.org Here's a piece about it in the Columbia Journalism Review: www.cjr.org/news/visuali...

Really enjoying 'Winds Gate' by John Thayer this week. A gorgeous, contemplative album that draws from the landscape and geology of the Hudson Valley. Something that resonates very deeply for me. auralcanyonmusic.bandcamp.com/album/winds-...

I spent a pretty big chunk of time this weekend trying to figure out how to make #atproto oauth work in a SvelteKit app. I got it working and I feel like I have experienced an important rite of passage.

The scale and sophistication of the modern data surveillance machine is terrifying. The way that so many large corporations are happy to feed this beast for their share of the spoils is not surprising but is clearly maximizing the harmful potential of these tools.

Got an instance of multi-scrobbler up and running on my home server. Recent tunes now on my pds: pdsls.dev/at://did:plc...

The more I use/think about atproto, the more I have been wondering this same thing. What happens if/when Bluesky can't or won't host most of the data for most atproto apps? Is it really possible to scale this up and keep things free for most people?

I like the look of the little linux cube pc. I would like a little linux cube pc plugged into my tv for gaming/streaming.

I've started mirroring some of my personal repositories on @tangled.org because it is simply very cool. Here's my personal website's SvelteKit codebase, atproto style: tangled.org/@mitchelltho...

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed 4 years ago. In new research @urbaninstitute.bsky.social we study its effects. US transport spending increased by 30%, but: —Funding for non-highway projects flatlined —Construction cost increases resulted in no actual increase in infrastructure

What would happen if the Amazon rainforest collapsed? Our look at deforestation and feedback loops. Also, the perfect occasion to make use of our new MapLibre/Protomaps scroller component. #maps #dataviz #ddj www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft...

Super interesting interview here. Great context for how the vision for atproto has come to life in the wake of real-world events and pressures as well as the guiding principles that have been foundational in that process.

Very nice network diagram in here mapping the many connections between Silicon Valley VC firms, Trump administration, and top defense contractors.

Not gonna lie, I am growing more excited and curious about the things that atproto makes possible by the day. Seeing the number of new ideas and experiments gaining traction right now is inspiring.

It's always fascinating to me to see the local geographic breakdown of how New York votes. Great election-district level map from @thecity.nyc www.thecity.nyc/2025/11/04/e...

The stream has begun. Join us: www.youtube.com/live/fKA4Vpk...

You now get double the amount of the 404 Media Podcast. We're airing two episodes a week now, with one of those being an interview with someone we've crossed paths with. This week, Joshua Aaron, creator of ICEBlock. Subs get early access. Apple/Spotify/YouTube: www.404media.co/the-crackdow...

Spent the weekend visiting family in the DC suburbs. What an absolutely perfect time of year.

Good morning from the Amtrak Northeast Regional. Truly one of my favorite places to think, read, write and work on projects. The best way to travel and it’s not even close.

Tailscale is genuinely one of the most useful tools I've adopted over the past few years. It simplified a piece of the puzzle enough to push me over the edge and start making my own self-hosted web tools all the time. Knowing I can securely access apps hosted in my apartment from anywhere rules.

Just landed a pretty big refactor of the Svelte-powered @urbaninstitute.bsky.social data viz component library that fully embraces runes syntax across all of our components. Svelte continues to be a flexible and powerful tool for our work. Check out our code on Github github.com/UrbanInstitu...

The US federal government's spending on housing—directly through the budget, or through tax expenditures—amounts to more than $400 billion a year. Only about 1/4 of that goes to low-income renters. The majority is spent on subsidizing higher-income homeowners. www.urban.org/research/pub...

Today @urbaninstitute.bsky.social launches a new data tool: The American Affordability Tracker. We're collecting data that tracks the rising costs of a secure lifestyle, and indicators of financial distress that are contributing to a growing crisis. See the data here: www.urban.org/data-tools/a... 📊

Did you know that nearly half of families in the US with children under 4 struggle to afford diapers? 📊 A new data tool from @urbaninstitute.bsky.social looks at data in states and counties to understand where the largest gaps are. www.urban.org/data-tools/m...

Excited to share this new piece from @urbaninstitute.bsky.social @wcurrangroome.bsky.social @andrewrumbach.bsky.social @sara-mctarnaghan.bsky.social and team that gives an excellent data-driven overview of the last 20 years of natural disasters and federal spending in Gulf Coast states. Lots of 📊!

New visual story: Inside the relentless race for AI capacity The quest for superintelligence is spurring a data centre boom — but critics question the cost, environmental impact and whether it is all needed ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...

When I read Mood Machine earlier this year, I began seriously thinking about cancelling my Spotify sub. This piece from @hearingthingsco.bsky.social finally pushed me to act. I've been buying more music from @bandcamp.com, and from now on I'll be using a different platform for streaming.

Cremieux’s real name is Jordan Lasker. I put his name in the newspaper. He’s a scientific racist www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

New case study up on my redesigned website! Full process of building a custom #datavisualization tool: brainstorming and prototyping to refining the UX through cross-functional teamwork and creative problem-solving! Inspired by @alv9n.com's great project walkthroughs!

What a beautiful new album from Duval Timothy out this week: duvaltimothy.bandcamp.com/album/wishfu...

This week, @urbaninstitute.bsky.social launched the Education-to-Workforce Framework data tool. This was one of the more complex @svelte.dev apps we've built, and @benkates.com led the way on development and made something really cool with this one. apps.urban.org/features/edu...

Learn ggplot from the best in the field! 👇 This is also super interesting for my friends in science and their research groups.

NYC’s congestion pricing is a policy miracle: Less traffic, less noise, faster transit, more business sales, more transit revenue. And it hasn’t produced the negative effects outside the cordon zone we were afraid of. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

the html review 04: my favorite internet journal put out a fourth issue of experimental web writing https://thehtml.review/04/

New data tool launch today 🚨 @urbaninstitute.bsky.social's Federal Infrastructure site. It includes detailed information on funds from 110 programs across all states, counties & metro areas. Tool pinpoints the support that communities receive for transportation, housing, energy, water & broadband.

Very gratifying to see three data visualization projects we worked on at @urbaninstitute.bsky.social longlisted at the Information is Beautiful awards. Kudus to @mitchellthorson.com @benkates.com and @arobotwriting.bsky.social for their outstanding work bringing these complex datasets to life.

For the German election we wanted to use a cartogram of German election districts but didn't find anything good, so we created our own. Here's a little nerd thread how the final algorithm worked 🤓 🧵 #gis #cartogram #election #datavis #cartography

New research @urbaninstitute.bsky.social shows that mass deportations would likely worsen the housing shortage by decimating the labor force. Immigrants make up >23% of the construction workforce & more in FL, TX. About half are estimated to be undocumented immigrants. www.urban.org/urban-wire/m...

HUD programs support more than 5 million low-income households. They're now under threat of big cuts. Our new data tool @urbaninstitute.bsky.social provides detailed info about people supported by HUD programs—and funds received—in every state & Congressional district: www.urban.org/data-tools/f...

Dismantling the Dept of Ed or disrupting functions like enforcing critical civil rights laws or halting IDEA funding could affect students with disabilities across the US. The number of public school students with Individualized Education Programs may surprise you: www.urban.org/urban-wire/h...

How long will housing recovery following LA's wildfires take? My team @urbaninstitute.bsky.social requested data on four recent fires and analyzed the recovery phases along three key milestones: 1) Debris removal 2) A building permit and 3) Certificate of occupancy www.urban.org/urban-wire/w...