Data Riordan

the thing about programming is the finding out is usually pretty disconnected from the fucking around, be it a dev/ops split, or user/developer, or even past/future, people do not get to experience the consequences of their choices and are not incentivised to imagine them either

don’t get mad, or even. just file foias.

Some personal news: I’m no longer calling it the Net. Now it’s the Grid. I’m posting this on the Grid right now. Thanks!

I pledged to complete the long-delayed safety redesign of McGuinness Boulevard if elected. Last week, we got to work. A safer McGuinness Boulevard will be finished this fall.

In case you missed it, last month I released perhaps my most detailed visualization ever. It's about a strange bureaucratic ritual that plays out every 3 years in the U.S. Copyright Office: www.jerthorp.me/post/the-bur...

I realize that the formal and legal mechanisms, designed as they to arrest the malfeasance of mere gunpowder kings, are too slow and clunky for the mad dreams of a thermonuclear monarch with a globe-spanning petroleum empire, but I'd still rather see them tried than resign myself to nothing.

Huge thank you to the mom in the local schools group text who reminded us that the most apt precedent for AI in education is probably the airdropping of One Laptop Per Child OLPC XO-1’s throughout the global south

You might be able to shut down Horizon Worlds, but I'll still have my VRML.

Saw the craziest test Waymo in Manhattan today vimeo.com/63542427

You must understand that to manufacture consent requires a manufacturing capacity. Instead, we must retrain to learn to code consent.

🎁 With 6 weeks left in office, Eric Adams responded to a request I made nearly 3 years ago for the gifts he received as mayor. The release covers only half his term. It features an engraved belt buckle, an artillery shell, dozens of books, and, yes, a box of saltines.

children are born pedestrians yet everywhere kept in cars

This is truly a beautiful and transformative experience of a course. Worth making space in your life for it type thing.

As a scholar, as a teacher, and now as a museum educator, Chronicling America has been invaluable. Beyond that, though, it's OURS. We paid for it. It's a public good.

i just finished my longest into to @beta.nyc's weekly newsletter. this one covers the NYPD's gang database & the new QoL unit that might be using 311 data 🤷🏻‍♀️ #opendata #civictech #pitech beta.nyc/2025/05/08/w...

You may be familiar with its previous name "The Manahatta Project"

This is tomorrow! I'll be sending out the e-mail with event details this afternoon, so register soon if you want to join our 🧶📊🐦 party.

or I would build out tools for organizing, like bsky.app/profile/bunk... or trestle.us

if I was a funder or a technologist trying to do good, I would not launch a shadow 18f, that's just another private contractor that will be beholden to Trump's orders, I would instead backfill the left's digital infrastructure (Act Blue, Bonterra) which is under threat now

vector mind, raster soul

the solution is simple, we edit wikipedia to say that america is not in trade deficit to anyone, and wait for chatgpt to be updated and re-run in a few days

📄 Here's a fun one for NYC journo nerds. In response to my FOIA, the FBI has released this file on David Burnham, the muckraker behind the NYPD corruption stories of the 70s who died last year. Hoover wanted David's sources. Here's the best they had. Wish David could read it.

And overnight your friends at @nehgov.bsky.social staff have been placed on Admin Leave.

“How are you?” Living the D.R.E.A.M.

Figured it was better to be upfront about the data work that goes into our models at enigma. mdr.enigmatechnologies.dev

New from me —> Wired's un-paywalling of stories built on public data is a reminder of that data’s role in the information ecosystem www.niemanlab.org/2025/03/wire...

Congestion Pricing Week 2: text scammers start sending false toll collection. Another point in the “Unquestionable Success” column