New project! Two influential word lists made by language researchers define an "essential English vocabulary" for learners: one from 1953 and another from 2023. In this essay, Jasmine Nackash examines the differences between them and what that says about us. link: pudding.cool/2026/07/esse...

Our blog is up talking about Flint, our intermediate visualization language designed for concision and controllable via AI agents! www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

AI can generate Charts. Flint helps generate better ones.

Short chart specifications are easy to write, but often produce uninspiring results. Flint is an open-source visualization language that offers a middle path, letting AI agents create expressive chart...

microsoft.com

See you soon!

📊 Everyone is debating the use (or not) of #GenAI, and the #dataviz community is no exception. My colleagues and I are conducting a survey to understand this moment, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on how this is impacting our field (please share!): survey.au.dk/LinkCollecto...

Job opening at @upshot.nytimes.com Come help us explain the news! We're looking for a visual journalist and graphics developer to report, write, design and code data-driven stories and visualizations. Details here: www.nytco.com/careers/job-...

Data Graphics/Multimedia Editor, The Upshot | The New York Times Company

nytco.com

Every American needs to watch this:

I'm a bit slower writing than I wanted to, but I banged my head over this technical question during the holiday break and I'd figure I'd write this up so I could help at least one other person. Trying to counter all the AI slop articles I ran into while searching... alper.datav.is/blog/2026/01...

Remote rsync for a Synology NAS

Getting rsync to work on my Synology NAS from a remote machine.

alper.datav.is

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

I grew up with Alex Pretti

The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by ICE agents was my childhood best friend.

theverge.com

Mubashir and his family came to the United States as refugees from Ethiopia when he was a child, and they all became naturalized citizens in 2019. Despite being a U.S. citizen, Mubashir was targeted by ICE, assaulted, and detained. Listen to his story:

Is the Talaris development in Laurelhurst destined to be completely open space? Just saw that Seattle city council voted to acquire/condemn it for the developer's tax benefit at the tune of costing SPU $9.6M: seattle.legistar.com/LegislationD... (cc @theurbanist.org @typewriteralley.bsky.social)

A new blog post about _that_ new xkcd. Hit me pretty hard, so I wanted to write a bit about it, check it out below. alper.datav.is/blog/2025/12...

xkcd with the assist!

xkcd hits it out of the park, and using that to talk about my recent mindset.

alper.datav.is

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

Alt text version. Thanks for sharing Harry.

reposting an old blog post because I think it's cool: every red light that I pulled up to while on a bike ride in September 2022. alper.datav.is/blog/2022/09...

Red light study

Every red light on a 30mi bike ride.

alper.datav.is

(posted without comment)

Bobo@boboispost.ing · 10mo ago

see ya there!

Alex Power[s]@itsnotaboutthecell.com · 10mo ago

On October 22nd, the #PowerBI Visuals team is hosting an Ask Me Anything (AMA) event for the r/PowerBI subreddit members! Don’t miss out! Visit the link below and select [Remind Me] on the post to be notified when they go live. #AMA #DataViz www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/co...

Gmail used to say I had (100+) e-mail messages. Now it says (23,437). 🥲

We're hiring for a senior engineer on the Power BI Core Visuals team! Please apply if you're interested, or let me know if you have any clarifying questions :) jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo...

hit and runs are stupid, doubly stupid when it happens to family. If you can support, please do: gofund.me/cf3a464f

I'm excited to note that we released a feature recently that tries to clarify why certain fields can't be used in field wells and conditional formatting sources while editing a Power BI report. Hopefully it helps report authors :D #powerbi #pbicorevisuals powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/p...

Power BI May 2025 Feature Summary

The May 2025 Power BI update introduces a range of exciting advancements to Power BI, including a standalone Copilot feature allowing users to “Ask Anything!” in preview, enhanced ...

powerbi.microsoft.com

The inaugural Seattle Visualization Day is happening this Friday at UW. I'll be there talking about our intent-driven visualization design that we're working on! More info about the event here: idl.uw.edu/vis-day

With tax day coming up on April 15, we want to make sure our community knows about IRS Direct File. It’s a free option for filing a federal tax return, and you can learn more about it at DirectFile.irs.gov.

Goin' live soon to talk about the Core Visuals roadmap! #powerbi #pbicorevisuals www.youtube.com/live/7g66NQN...

The only year-in-review from an organization worth posting... THANKS FOR THE JAMS!! @c895radio.bsky.social

(from our PM on Twitter) Hey Power BI community! The Core Visuals Vision Board, your new resource for Power BI. Explore, vote, comment on Epic Ideas to shape our future. Instant visibility into what's completed, in progress, and upcoming. aka.ms/PBI-Core-Vis... #PowerBI #PBICoreVisuals

The "trip" reports to the big data vis conference are tricklin' in. Check out Michael Correll's recap below!

The Birdbassador@birdbassador.jorts.horse.ap.brid.gy · 2y ago

Only a month or so of lag this time but I just published my trip report from IEEE VIS 2024, which is kind of mostly about psychoanalysis: https://mcorrell.medium.com/mene-mene-tekel-upharsin-a-trip-report-from-ieee-vis-2024-58a2e87cf9b3

My brother's business is having a grand opening party next Saturday, Nov 16th in (greater) Seattle and we'd love to have ya! Just next to Third Place Books in LFP, it's great to have a computer store open up in Seattle :) (yes, there's a PC giveaway) seattlebuilt.com/store/

Hi new website! I'm Alper and I work on the Power BI Core Visuals team as an software engineer at Microsoft. I try to bridge the gap between research and practice in driving effective visualization authoring and consumption experiences for people of varying data and visual fluency.