Aleszu

Very cool that Storybench.org, the behind the scenes of data and digital storytelling blog I started 10 years ago is still going strong! Thanks to incredible students, professors and contributors like @walinchus.bsky.social

Bloomberg used a ResNet-18 CNN model to classify waste sites in Gaza, and “every computer-generated result was manually validated to ensure the highest possible accuracy.”

Weed Regulation is Foundering. For Answers, Look to the Labs Lots of legal marijuana is sold with inflated THC levels or unsafe contaminants. Can the oversight system be reformed?

My investigation on the cannabis industry for @undark.org — supported by @pulitzercenter.bsky.social — took me from farms in OR to MA testing labs to the OK capitol, uncovering corruption and highlighting change makers along the way.

It's quite the ride. Enjoy! undark.org/2025/07/16/c...

If you thought legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use would make it safer and free of contaminants, think again. Labs cheat and cheating labs get more business, @undark.org reports. The answer is more state-run labs.
By @teresacarr.bsky.social
Data viz by @aleszu.bsky.social

How to transform public meetings into engaging social media clips Testing Descript, OpusClip and Veed.

We worked with the team at DFP to evaluate tools and establish a workflow for creating short-form vertical video. We wanted to find a way to edit and caption the most important parts of city council meeting videos, which are posted online, to publish on social media. rjionline.org/news/how-to-...

Three satellite images showing construction of the Fordo nuclear enrichment plant in Iran, attempts to hide the air vents, and the location of bomb strikes.

Satellite-derived map from National Geographic showing the Mustang Valley between Tibet and Nepal.

Animation showing the movement of smoke over the Upper Midwest from Canadian wildfires.

Chart showing water used to grow animal feed in the Imperial Valley.

Satellite imagery has unique qualities that make it suitable for investigative journalism. It allows observation of inaccessible places, views of wide areas, monitoring over time, and even “see” the invisible. Read more in my latest post:

medium.com/@robsimmon/n...

#dataviz #ddj #cartography

Economic loss due to NIH budget cuts by congressional district, scienceimpacts.org/fy26

The #SCIMaP team announces a major update: an analysis of the economic impacts of the White House's NIH FY26 budget.

Bottom-line, we estimate $46B in total economic loss, 202K lost jobs, and impacts in communities nationwide.

Interactive map and shareable report:
scienceimpacts.org/fy26

a 🧵

Getting the most out of the Wayback Machine Tips for the Wayback Machine browser extension, API, and more!

The Wayback Machine is an indispensable tool for archiving web content. It's also a powerful search engine that can dig up deleted webpages and social media posts.

Here's the Indicator guide to getting the most out of the Wayback machine: indicator.media/p/ge...

Youtube-Tools | User Comments History Search any YouTube user comment history with ease. Access over 20 billion comments from more than 1.4 billion users, recorded since 2005. Quickly find and explore user comment histories for research, ...

LolArchiver launches a new tool: YouTube Comment History. View all video comments from a specific user. So far they’ve archived 20 billion comments from 1.4 billion different accounts. youtube-tools.lolarchiver.com via @craigsilverman.bsky.social

How this year’s Pulitzer awardees used AI in their reporting For a second year, the Pulitzer Prizes required applicants to divulge AI usage — one winner and three finalists disclosed.

One Pulitzer Prize winner (and three finalists) disclosed using AI to this year's judging committee.

I spoke to the reporters behind those stories about how they leaned on AI tools in their investigations. My latest for @niemanlab.org. www.niemanlab.org/2025/05/how-...

Inside Elon Musk’s X Feed: Trumpism, Falsehoods and Lots of Love for Elon Musk The New York Times tracked 1,109 accounts that Mr. Musk follows on X to recreate his news feed.

I tracked more than 1,000 accounts that Elon Musk follows on X to recreate what he sees www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Three New Tools to Explore Social Media The Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe, pronounced “awesome”) is excited to introduce three new tools that will make it easier to study and engage with...

Our team just launched three new tools to help you explore social media data:
🌉NewsBridge – Adds AI-powered context to Facebook posts
🔍 Barney’s Tavern – Search 34B social media posts
🌐 OSoMeNet – Visualize how info spreads across platforms
Learn more and try them out:
osome.iu.edu/research/blo...

1/ For ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother” series, winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for public service, we reported on five pregnant women who died after not receiving timely medical care in states with strict abortion bans.

These are their stories 🧵

Stop pretending journalism matters on its own Learning to measure journalism by its human value.

“The strongest media organizations I've encountered understand that people don't seek out journalism for journalism's sake - they want solutions to problems, ways to improve their lives, recognition, community.“ @pboehler.net www.pboehler.net/theory-of-se...

Senior Graphics Reporter Remote

Join my team at NPR! We're hiring for a senior graphics reporter. Remote-friendly (in the US). grnh.se/f78153425us

Computational Journalist, Data Reporting Application Instructions Please list all professional experience and explain any gaps in employment history. All of your application materials, which may include PDF files of work samples and/or links...

🚨We're hiring! 🚨
The @wpdatateam.bsky.social is looking for a computational journalist -- someone who can help tell big national stories but also work across our team in developing best devops and big data practices. We value camaraderie, learning and collaboration. Feel free to reach out w/ Qs:

Bloomberg analyzed data, “which covers Jan. 1, 2012 through Feb. 17, 2025, obtained from the Deportation Data Project. The dataset includes records of more than 3.5 million ICE detainees and the dates when the detainees entered and left facilites.”

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

The push alerts of the first 100 days of the Trump administration

The AP “ran the text of [push] alerts through a model called BAAI general embedding to vectorize it. We then ran a similarity search over the vectors, using a FAISS index, and boosted the specific terms ‘Trump’ and ‘U.S. government.’” apnews.com/projects/tru...

This triangle helps explain a titanic shift in how Australia votes This triangle is going to help us explain how Australian politics has fundamentally changed over the past five decades.

So much to love in the scrollytelling — the ternary plot, the depth of the data, the findings — but my favourite part is the explanation and the text in general. 📊

Remember, a chart doesn't have to be understood in 3 seconds. It should reward the effort you put into understanding it.

They Criticized Musk on X. Then Their Reach Collapsed. Three users who disagreed with the site’s owner saw views for their posts plummet.

I really appreciate news stories that take a phenomenon we all generally implicitly understand or assume but don't have any hard data or evidence for, then meticulously prove it. Well done @stuartathompson.bsky.social.

Exclusive: a Nature analysis signals the beginnings of a US science brain drain A trawl of job views and application data suggests jobseekers are looking abroad as the Trump administration’s cuts to science take hold.

“Data from the Nature Careers global science jobs platform show that US scientists submitted 32% more applications for jobs abroad between January and March 2025 than during the same period in 2024” www.nature.com/articles/d41...

DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants DOGE is knitting together data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, an IRS that could create a surveillance tool of unprecedented scope.

“I think it's hard to overstate what a significant departure this is and the reshaping of longstanding norms and expectations that people have about what the government does with their data,” says Elizabeth Laird at the Center for Democracy and Technology www.wired.com/story/doge-c...

Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More By slashing teams that gather critical data, the administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose con...

This is an EXCELLENT article. I teach statistics to public policy students & tell them that data are essential for making the world a better place. We need good data to assess the state of things, see how things have changed over time, & evaluate if policies work.

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Elon Musk gets government policy ideas from X. Here’s how. A look at which accounts — big and small — have Musk’s ear and how some appear to have sparked action from Musk and the Trump administration.

The Post identified several instances of Trump or DOGE implementing policy ideas proposed to Musk by users on X. Some proposals went from Musk's X feed to the White House Briefing Room in just hours. with @erxclau.me @azipaybarah.bsky.social & Talia Trackim

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

A point graph entitled Changes in Legal Representation by Language in Completed Immigration Court Cases. The x-axis is entitled Percent of Cases with Representation. The Y-axis has ten languages in order of relative representation. There are three text annotations. 1. Compared to the previous four years, Arabic-speakers are represented in a smaller share of cases in FY 25... 2. ...while Russian-speakers are represented in a greater share. 3. For both Creole- and Spanish-speakers, the rate of representation has fallen by more than 10 percentage points in FY 25.

RE: SCOTUS

Access to legal counsel seems to be make or break for so many. I mean, who walks around with a habeas petition in their pocket?

In a recent article for tracreports.org, I compared how often individuals with different spoken language proficiencies are represented in immigration court.

Nature analysis of NIH Grant Terminations in 2025 database www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Science Misinformation: Journalism in the Age of Truth Decay The Pulitzer Center is seeking applications for in-depth and investigative stories related to science misinformation, science denial, and the spread of pseudoscience. We’re also interested in...

The Pulitzer Center is offering a Science Misinformation Journalism Grant to any journalist tackling science misinformation around the world. Deadline: rolling.

pulitzercenter.org/grants-fello...

Graphics Editor New York City, United States; Remote, United States

Rare opportunity to work with the great @lenagroeger.bsky.social creating graphics at @propublica.org. And yes, it's a remote-friendly, union job in the @propublicaguild.bsky.social -->

Screenshot of shell script to audit GitHub actions code

“A week ago, somebody added malicious code to the tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action. If you used the compromised action, it would leak secrets to your build log.”

Tips plus a shell script to audit your GitHub Actions

alexwlchan.net/2025/github-...