Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting about Observability. Not from the operational aspect, but from the sociotechnical one. I’ll dive into design and the humanistic inquiry of shaping captured data about the state of a system.

Oh hi. I work here now (week 3). How fun!

The biggest irony in this whole story is FDA staffers bringing their own water to FDA offices because they don’t wanna catch Legionnaires’ disease. apnews.com/article/fda-...

Wife was a probationary employee let go over the weekend. She was a researcher with CMMI. If anyone has leads on jobs for a PhD social science researcher with an expertise in Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance, please let me know!

Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC. There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn't it. I've been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon.

Somewhere in the U.S., there’s a scientist staring at their NSF/NIH grant application wondering why they bother. This post is for you. Science and society both need you. Hang in there and know there is a whole community supporting you.

Use the Human Microbiome Compendium data! We made the data and code available, & created a website and R package to navigate the compendium. Links: - Website: microbiomap.org - Data: zenodo.org/records/1373... - R package: blekhmanlab.github.io/MicroBioMap/ - Code: github.com/blekhmanlab/...

It dawned on me that all the designers of my new core team are Latinos/Spanish. One Colombian and one Mexican living in Dublin. One Spaniard in Boston, and myself (Costa Rican) living in Virginia. Our boss is Irish born, but honorary Latino at this point. They’re all superb designers. How lovely 🥰

I fear there is deep truth here.

People think of WhatsApp as a messaging app, but entire economies run on it. In the global south many business don’t have websites, they have WhatsApp contacts and many transactions are possible thanks to it

So are we also leaving IG? I don’t use FB, and I can’t stop using WhatsApp because that’s how I communicate with my entire family and friends, but as a Latino, queer, immigrant using meta services feels just plain wrong.

Network of the day. From: Pitts, "Graph theoretical approach to historical geography" (1965)

after days of grifters and con men at CES we stumbled upon the booth for VLC. they were all dressed as wizards and told us, "we have nothing to sell, we just decided to show up". i told them I'd been using their software to pirate media for 15 years and they said "keep doing that"

It’s crazy how good the quality of phone cameras is today. I took this on an iPhone 16 Pro in RAW 12 format using the default Photo app and only tweaked it a bit. I didn’t even use a tripod, I just laid flat and held the phone on my face 😂 My Micro 4/3rds Olympus cannot do this.

Dear #accessibility folk. A family member has hearing loss that cannot be aided with ear devices. I’m looking for a handheld device that can live transcribe a conversation in SPANISH so that they can read what others are saying. So far the closest I’ve found is a recorder from iFLYTECH. Ideas?

1/ Influenza wastewater activity levels are currently low across the US, aside from conspicuous areas in CA where #H5N1 is spreading in dairy cows. A deeper dive into the Wastewater Scan data paints a very concerning picture and should add to our sense of urgency.

It takes courage and integrity not to be co-opted into systems of injustice. As public health and science come under attack, I have profound respect—even reverence—for those who choose to RESIST and keep fighting for truth and what is right. #ProtectPublicHealth #Resist

This is a lovely thread. I invite you to read it. There is actual discourse happening. Holy shit I haven’t seen this in a social media app in years. Also design as a practice is political too - maybe I need to write a thread about that bc so many of you don’t want to admit that either

I've just deactivated my X account. I also have a number of new followers so time for a re-intro: Hello, I'm Antonio. I'm a product and information designer. Come here for cat pics, hot takes on soup, design ethics, design for data-intensive apps, and the occasional music rec.

Isn't this fun: Notion limits free accounts to 1000 blocks for accounts with shared content. A "block" is some sort of made up unit of content. Deleting content doesn't reduce the # of blocks. It's a cumulative number and so you either kick your guests or can't create more content. Very dirty move

Seeing a lot of "UX design for AI" roles opening - as though tech realized that no one wants their shitty chatbots for their own sake and is scrambling to find people who make stuff users like (that they laid off in droves in 2023)

Been routinely grabbing a bite weekly at Tatte before my piano lessons and the soups are surprisingly tasty. Today’s chicken soup stands out for the addition of fennel (a personal favorite) and Cannellini beans. Follow me for more soup reviews

The new information architecture and especially the organization system (whatever it is) of the iOS Photos app is so disorienting. How are “Recent Days”, “Albums”, and “Pinned Collections” siblings? 💀

Looking for great books or resources on Information Architecture (other than the polar bear book). Send your recs! #design #ia #information

Finally ready to move away from [the other platform]. Rarely do we get a social media reset. Let's make new, bolder mistakes this time!

I just got a new phone (iPhone 16 Pro upgraded from iPhone 13) and as soon as I opened Instagram I got so many ads for iPhone cases. 10 ads in about 60s of scrolling. Unhinged.

Remarkable chart. www.ft.com/content/e8ac...

Honestly I miss the work I was doing when I was in infectious disease. I was so close to the science, the work kept me on my toes, my peers were incredibly dedicated, lots of room for design experimentation. Wish there were environments like that outside of academia

Me at work: I have concepts of a plan

ICYMI: There are pressing questions that need to be answered about the Missouri #H5 #birdflu case in a person with no reported exposures to animals. Here are 5 and why they're important. www.statnews.com/2024/09/08/m...

Kinda sucks I can’t save/bookmark posts. Obsidian it is

#dataviz #gis #maps folk. If you had to pick ONE map (OK max two) to show 16-17 y.o. students taking AP Human Geography what would you pick? My friend is a teacher and asked me for surprising, interesting, eye-opening maps (or other related viz).

With the influx of dataviz people, let's do some re-intros. 📊 — What's your claim to fame? ✨ — How might we know you already? What have you done that we might have seen or read before? What would help us remember how we came across you? Don't be shy: it's helping us reconnect and remember you 💡

I like this place so far. But the algorithm could be improved so that not the same 3-5 people who write a LOT dominate my timeline ALL THE TIME. Had to unfollow some people because of this. Not because I don't like what they write, but because this is all I got before scrolling down some pages.

Perhaps many already know this but the US medical industry still uses FAX machines to send and receive info like labs, imaging, and medical records. So we continue building “cutting edge” technology to essentially process xeroxed pdfs ad nauseam

Decided to start using Obsidian. YouTube has 14 min guides or 2h long guides to get started. Any good resources and/or plugins out there?

I got a handful of net new followers! Quick re-intro: I’m a product and information designer by training, working with clinical data, genomics, infectious diseases, and cancer. I love my husband, maps, cats, languages, and food. I’m also a Latino who migrated to the US. Please say hi!

Is dataviz and science Twitter moving here? Please RT/Follow me if you are part of these fields. Also if you’re into design/ux/hci I miss my community of nuanced and kind folk

Hoping this is better than Mastodon. If you like cats, dataviz, reductive ux design takes, spices, la latinidad, or minimalist music, please follow me