all the GIS in R all the GIS in R ALL THE GIS IN R arcGIS who???

If not for the government shutdown we'd be getting the September Current Population Survey data release in the next few days. Now: 🤷‍♀️

Shutdown day 1: The Census website and data.census.gov are offline. The APIs do appear to be working for now but not all data lives there. Vital that we have alternate data hosters like IPUMS.

Not much surprises me anymore but this landlord screening software that forces prospective renters to grant direct access to their workplace payroll accounts and/or sit on a three-way call with their banks is not something I dreamed up www.404media.co/landlords-de...

A news tidbit: This week the D.C. Council will vote on an emergency bill from @cmchenderson.bsky.social that will allow pharmacies to administer the COVID-19 vaccine without a doctor's prescription. Because of changes at the federal level, local pharmacies have been requiring a prescription.

It's here: 2024 American Community Survey 1-year summary data! AND the 2025 CPS-ASEC supplement microdata plus the monthly August 2025 CPS release. Big day for data nerds.

It's alive! 🎉 My Census data tracker captured its first real (not test) minor data update yesterday: time frame update to the historical poverty dataset. 2024 is now available. There have been a couple major data updates (data endpoints added) but this is the first minor! github.com/hrecht/censu...

Can't wait to FOIA the HHS ChatGPT logs.

DC: CVS MinuteClinic has the new covid vaccine, appts still available later today, this weekend. Got mine today. I had to attest to eligibility but didn't need proof. It will be billed as an office visit for the MinuteClinic assessment (probably, NP wasn't 100% sure.) Took about 15 minutes total.

Crucially: how is CVS communicating all these constant changes to its pharmacy staff on the ground? A few days ago CVS staff at a pharmacy in DC were saying that the covid vaccines weren't in yet, seemingly not aware that they wouldn't be able to give them without a prescription.

"We need a government-wide changelog." - yes. strong cosign and thanks @flowingdata.com for the shoutout to my lil Census tracker flowingdata.com/2025/08/20/t...

the world may be full of swirling chaos but I have finally started really using Svelte, so at least my front-end code is peaceful and calm

Good thing no one uses Microsoft Excel for anything related to legal, regulatory or compliance business functions www.theverge.com/news/761338/...

new protest art spotted in DC

What happens when government disinvests from public transit? Commutes get longer & more frustrating. A NJ Transit case study from me, @suryamattu.com and @mariepastora.bsky.social : www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

ICYMI I built a Census tracker + Bluesky bot that posts when they add 👀 or remove 👀 datasets

We try to clarify what happened in D.C. this week, what we can expect in the future, and what this all means for the residents who call D.C. home. There's a lot we don't know, but we'll continue following this story in the days and weeks to come. 51st.news/trump-dc-mpd...

Neat resource from @hannahrecht.bsky.social - tracking changes to U.S. Census Bureau datasets www.hrecht.com/census-api-d...

onion font!!! onion font!!!!!!!! pudding.cool/2025/08/onio...

Does anyone know of an #rstats package that sends objects out to the Github Env for use in Github Actions? @posit.co? I don't want to reinvent the wheel if it exists but I can't keep writing code like this, it hurts.

an amazing resource!!

🚀 I made a tracker that shows when the Census Bureau adds or removes datasets from their APIs. Dashboard at www.hrecht.com/census-api-d... and follow @censusapitracker.bsky.social for major updates. I've been wanting to build this for years but now seemed an especially important time to keep track.

Always follow @maustermuhle.bsky.social for some of the absolute best DC government reporting out there

good day to support your local nonprofit newsroom givebutter.com/SsQ8CG

🚀 I made a tracker that shows when the Census Bureau adds or removes datasets from their APIs. Dashboard at www.hrecht.com/census-api-d... and follow @censusapitracker.bsky.social for major updates. I've been wanting to build this for years but now seemed an especially important time to keep track.

i have a new lil project to launch and also terrible news timing 🫠

Trump on a long rambling tangent about other cities that wash their sidewalks weekly. In reality walking around commercial areas in DC on weekday mornings is already an exercise in dodging workers power washing the sidewalk. This is a thing that businesses....already do.

The irony is not lost on many in Washington that Trump says spitting on a DC cop is justification for hitting/punching back "hard" when he pardoned hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted those same cops — and said attacks on them that day were "minor."

D.C.'s falling violent crime stats, as seen in a new @washingtonpost.com graphic. There's no denying the city had a spike in violent crime in 2023, as President Trump was campaigning for president. There's also no denying that it already has receded.

My goto is to ask LLMs how many states have R in their name. They always fail. GPT 5 included Indiana, Illinois, and Texas in its list. It then asked me if I wanted an alphabetical highlighted map. Sure, why not.

Excuse me ChatGPT, what are the AP abbreviations for the great states of Phemopohamp and Corol Soavguo?

tools that still exist that don't hallucinate or use massive amounts of water and power: human brains physical calculators the calculator app on your phone programming google searches without ai books librarians

Senators Ron Wyden & Elizabeth Warren are asking UnitedHealth to hand over company records about its attempts to reduce hospitalizations for nursing home residents—following our investigation: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Jay Bhattacharya says that Program Officers made up banned words lists at NIH. This is a real email I got at NIH. (Granted, before Jay started.) But nothing has changed since he joined. I refused to censor the summary, so it remains unposted. And I have tried since Jay arrived.

Project Runway really said you can have Heidi Klum back but must also accept a new set of chaos twins, going full 2017

TurfJS in R! Turf in R!!! 🚀 To think right around this time 13 years ago I made my first ever map in *SAS* and oh boy the agony.

behold: a rare scrollytelling experience that I actually like. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

*Huge* new feature in Datawrapper! You can now create locator maps using the globe (aka orthographic) projection. Makes small scale maps so much better compared to the Mercator projection! All thanks to the amazing folks at @datawrapper.de and @maplibre.org ❤️ www.datawrapper.de/blog/new-glo...

Arrests spiked after Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem ordered ICE to meet an arrest quota so they can get to 1 million a year. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

I cannot seem to figure out a LinkedIn notification setting that's in between "get relentless emails about absolutely nothing every day" and "literally never see any comments on my posts even on the website." Cool cool.

Hello to everyone else getting bombarded with ads of AI Oprah fakes shilling "pink salt" for weight loss creators.yahoo.com/lifestyle/st...

Another day, another dropdown that doesn't include D.C. in this here year 2025.

Update: DC's Rent Registry portal launched more than a month ago with promising links to explore rental data but the dashboard is still password protected w/ many broken links. A spokesperson told me data won't actually be accessible til November or later. Sigh.

I've been struggling to make sense of the totally revamped bus routes in DC (WMATA's Better Bus Network) so I grabbed the GTFS data and made a simple little map. Turns out there is a pattern to the route numbers! Hopefully I'll learn my new routes before 2030. www.hrecht.com/blog/posts/d...

Attention open source mapping folks and anyone who has contacts on the @github.com Pages team! 👇

kind of getting curious to see the detailed research on my failed SEO keywords on my portfolio website, which has zero trackers needs more "GIVE ME YOUR SECRET DATA" and "I'm the journalist not the MD with the same name" SEO tags??

Great story/charts from @lydiadepillis.bsky.social @christinezhang.bsky.social on how health care ate the American economy. This pair of maps is especially striking. #EconSky www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

So much reporting on the budget bill and yet so few mentions that Congress never fixed the DC budget hole it created

‼️ Several months ago I received a package of 600 (male) catheters with someone else's name and address on the inside packing slip and despite many phone calls could never get a definitive answer on why they were sent to me. I wonder.

From people who know how vaccine-preventable illness can permanently change lives: - Rubella: “I just don’t want anybody else to go through this.” - Measles: “I don’t think that they realize how destructive this is.” - Pertussis: "You don’t want to walk in my shoes.” Story by AP's Laura Ungar