🧵 I’ve talked a lot about disordered discourse, conspiracies, polarisation, denialism. But maybe the better question is: why does this keep happening? Why does our shared reality keep fracturing? What are the drivers I talk about as a dimension of disordered discourse?

The Trojans would've been stupid to reject the gift of the large wooden horse from Odysseus and the Greeks.

Concerning… www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Wow… from “A Gentleman in Moscow” by @amortowles.bsky.social, written in 2016.

A century of U.S. face palm: The Greatest Generation ↳ The Me Generation ↳ The Entitled Generation ↳ The Anxious Generarion

Intelligence, rigor, wisdom, compassion: neglect these at your peril.

I didn’t know April Fool’s Day was lasting the entire month this year.

Buckle up…

So. I wrote a dissertation on how economic crises can lead to the breakdown of authoritarian regimes. Here are three key point to keep in mind as you watch the news this week 🧵

Never accept the following in another: the inability to admit error, or, upon admitting it, the unwillingness to make it right. If this is an apt description of a person in your orbit, run.

NEW 🧵 A quick thread of charts showing how Trump’s economic agenda is going so far: 1) US consumers are reacting very very negatively. These are the worst ratings for any US government’s economic policy since records began.

I think the word legit is overused.

Failures in AI translation: My wife Becky just used Google Translate to ask our landscaper in Spanish to dump a bucket of weeds she had pulled, and he showed up at our front door wondering why she’s texting him about marijuana. 😂😂😂

Yes, I used the Atlantic author look-up app, too, and yes, I can see a number of my own books in LibGen. But mostly I just want to be this version of Ben Jones.

The ripple effects of the tariffs will hit everyone, and many are already feeling it. Small businesses with a high percentage of their revenue coming from cross-border clients will be the first to fall.

So far 2025 has been a good reminder to me how much I loathe recklessness and arrogance, two vices that seem to go hand-in-hand. I'm all for decisiveness, and some decisions can be tough. But I believe strongly in the importance of listening, weighing options, and seeking the compassionate path.

Maybe, just maybe, the past two decades of unbridled obsession with the anti-hero here in the U.S. haven’t served us very well.

NEW: The actions of Trump and Vance in recent weeks highlight something under-appreciated. The American right is now ideologically closer to countries like Russia, Turkey and in some senses China, than to the rest of the west (even the conservative west). My column: www.ft.com/content/3046...

For the record I’m against tariffs with Canada and Mexico, I’m in favor of supporting Ukraine, I’m behind federal programs to support science and foreign aid, and I’m vehemently pro-democracy and anti-authoritarian. So there ya go.

🇨🇦 🇺🇲

“You could say I’d lost my belief in our politicians. They all seemed like game show hosts to me.” Sting, 1993

This model of the development of one aspect of masculinity (“the warrior”) from boy (bottom pyramid) to man (top) is interesting in light of current events. The pinnacle represents balanced, healthy masculinity; bottom left is over-indexing in an unhealthy way / bottom right is under-indexing.

Word of the day: extortion.

My best client work develops singular powerful images that attract and inform minds. To do good work we need to engage and collaborate in a way that has creative energy, iteration, and momentum. I need to learn lots from you to get you where you need to go. Learn more at infoWeTrust.com

That's a bit of a head-trip: I had found the Christoper Reeve documentary to be quite moving, so I just re-watched Superman II last night. This morning, I woke up to the news of Gene Hackman's death. Life is full of strange coincidences like that.

Art thou come to take a spoil?

I’d be happy to give a free copy to speaker Johnson: a.co/d/h68xS7Q

Outlier is the annual #dataviz conference hosted by @datavizsociety.bsky.social and speaker applications for 2025 are finally open! The theme - Reimagining - invites all sorts of topics, from reimagining how we work to innovations in design. Can't wait for June!! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I hate to evoke a commonly butchered book, but this is 1 Samuel 8:10-18, the part where the prophet Samuel warns the Israelites about what the king they’re asking for will take from them. Spoiler alert: they ignore this warning.

Mt. Si in Winter, by Alex Trapp Recently I saw this painting in an art gallery in Snoqualmie of the place I hiked to the top of the day after my dad died almost a decade ago. Now it welcomes me when I walk in my front door.

Here’s a hummingbird sitting on a palm tree

“austerity theater” — @pkrugman.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Heads-up to fans of Kindle ebooks (I'm not one): www.zdnet.com/article/down...

Book launch day! dataliteracy.com/reflections-...

To the 4,400 U.S. Park and Forest Service members losing jobs - THANK YOU for all you’ve done over the years to give us all the gift of well-maintained trails, parks, and campgrounds. We’re really going to miss your hard work and smiling faces, and I hope you move on to more great things.

Truly a Dunning-Kruger form of government

A good general epistemic rule of thumb: If you have spent a few hours or weeks studying an area large numbers of smart, educated people have worked in for decades, and you believe you have discoverer an earthshattering truth they all missed, your default should be to regard this as VERY unlikely.

Enjoy the weekend! I hope you get some downtime, like Winston getting one of his many naps today.

In other news, America the beautiful.

People of #dataviz: note Mark’s comment at the end of his post below about viral sales pitches vs. forgotten charts. Our mode of communication is losing to the slogan. Badly. What do we do?

This was first published in French in 1962. In our lifetime, it has never been more true than today. Everyone should read ‘Propaganda’ by Jacques Ellul. But they won’t, and madness will run its course in our day, too. We aren’t more evolved than our ancestors. We just told ourselves that story.

This is amazing

If you find yourself agreeing wholeheartedly with every single item of a political party’s platform or a politician’s agenda, you should ask yourself if you have become radicalized due to propaganda. Guard your mind, think critically, resist oversimplifying.

I'm curious what my friends in the data visualization field (academics and practitioners alike) think is the most meaningful challenge the field can address, or the most significant contribution the field can make to technological progress and societal wellbeing in the next few years.

In times of adversity and suffering, it's important to remember that we human beings have a tendency to blame scapegoats, and when life feels out of control, we have a habit of turning to conspiracy theories to give ourselves a reassuring feeling of knowing what's really going on.

Coming soon, and now available for pre-order: the 2nd edition of Data Literacy Fundamentals. dataliteracy.com/now-availabl...

Always fun to see a little duct tape being applied to the wing of the airplane…

It's an important day for more than one reason, evidently, to reaffirm something so basic that it shouldn't have to be said: there's no room for hateful ideologies in our world.

As I was saying…. Not okay.