Work

The community that commutes together votes together

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed down a new map yesterday for the state’s US congressional districts in the League of Women Voters v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania case. Having found that the 2011 districting plan “was a partisan gerrymander and that … Continue reading

Ditto towns

New England is a beautiful place, but its place-names aren’t the most lyrical, with an awful lot of toponymic stealing from Old England. What’s more, New England place-names aren’t even uniquely plagiarized: 655 towns and cities in New England have … Continue reading

Piles upon piles

The snowfall accumulation GIF I posted on Saturday got a decent amount of attention. (Probably more attention than any other 1-hour time-killing project that I’ve ever done!) Matt Strimas-Mackey converted it into a colorized version using R, which looks great. … Continue reading

Snowpiles

Here’s a fun little visualization: the total seasonal snowfall in the continental US for 2017–2018 so far, shown as a relief map: Here’s how I made it. First, a Python scraper to pull down the data from the Weather Service: … Continue reading

When the government made communities

I have a piece up today in Places Journal on Rexford Tugwell’s battle with Robert Moses in New York City, in which I out myself as a believer in the Big State. The article is mostly about Tugwell’s brief time … Continue reading