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David Hsu

@dhsu.bsky.social

Professor studying cities, infrastructure, climate, energy, long bike rides, the Boston Celtics, & the drop serve. Personal account representing only me. Likes, reposts ≠ endorsements.

986 Posts10624 Follower1197 Folgt
David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I'm not sure if this means that much but occasionally I get entranced by packing as much information possible into one graph. Plotting on a map would just reveal most of the coastal and north-south differences between energy consumption, production, climate, wealth, and politics.

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David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Here's my full ranking because I REMEMBER THE ORIGINALS before they were polluted: 1. The Empire Strikes Back 2. Rogue One 3. A New Hope 4. Return of the Jedi 5-10. Seen some of them, but I can't remember which, which says it all.

Snitty@clofsnitville.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I haven't seen Solo but here's my full ranking, because I'm not some top five coward: 1. A New Hope 2. Rogue One 3. The Empire Strikes Back 4. Return of the Jedi 5. The Last Jedi 6. The Force Awakens 7. Rise of Skywalker 8. Revenge of the Sith 9. Attack of the Clones 10. The Phantom Menace

David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Oof, i just saw the most predictable crash in Cambridge. Person wearing headphones jaywalking between stopped cars. Noisy motorcycle going fast in the shoulder / bike lane (!?) wiped out, I think to avoid oblivious pedestrian. Everybody standing but also seems like everyone partially at fault.

David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I started thinking about how urbanization trends differ across the US and maybe went a bit too deep. Made this plot of % urbanized pop in each state versus John Borchert's model of urban evolution based on 5 epochs of urbanization in the US defined by transport tech (and AC!). YMMV.

Nine panel (3x3) graph of nine Census regions. Each panel has states plotted as urbanized percentage of the population versus year. Background shading is based on Borchert's model of urban evolution.
David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Enjoyed reading "The Unaccountability Machine" by Dan Davies: at turns thoughtful and hilarious. Goes deep into cybernetics, history, neoliberalism, and accounting (!). A friend sent me this quote which is pretty funny and on target unless you're an academic; then the joke is on you (and me).

Book highlight that says: "A not-wholly-unfair analysis of academic publishing would be that it is an industry in which academics compete against one another for the privilege of providing free labour for a profit-making company, which then sells the results back to them at monopoly prices."
David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 4mo ago

When I'm writing about electricity and the changes it wrought, I think about this article often by @adriennelaf.bsky.social .... written in 2015, more than a decade ago (!), this opening paragraph still rings true for AI as it did for dot coms, cloud computing, social media, crypto:

Picture of giant incandescent bulb from 2014.Article excerpt: Did Electricity Cause a Tech Bubble? What investors can learn from the frenzy around the new technology a century ago ADRIENNE LAFRANCE NOV 10, 2015 TECHNOLOGY Silicon Valley often finds itself faced with a difficult question, one that’s asked so often it’s practically a parlor game: Are we in a tech bubble? In other words, is the volume of money pouring into technology companies sustainable, or are we on the brink of a dot-com-esque collapse? In The Atlantic’s recent survey of dozens of tech thinkers, entrepreneurs, and executives, there was a curious response to this question that came up more than once. This isn’t a bubble, more than one respondent insisted, in the same way that there wasn’t an electricity bubble a century ago: People might have said it was a bubble at the time, but they were wrong. That’s a compelling comparison, and it requires a bit of unpacking to properly assess. Was there an electricity bubble? Did people at the time even claim there was?
David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Another profile in memoriam. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/31/m...

‘It’s a big void.’ Remembering Tracy Kidder, a Pioneer Valley icon. - The Boston Globe

For many in Williamsburg, it’s hard to imagine the place without him.

bostonglobe.com

David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I met him in high school at a book signing, and read his first five or six books before the even more recent and successful ones. I still think about the people he wrote about all the time. Rest in peace. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/25/m...

David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I met him in high school at a book signing, and read his first five or six books before the even more recent and successful ones. I still think about the people he wrote about all the time. Rest in peace. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/25/m...

Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author who expanded nonfiction’s reach, dies at 80 - The Boston Globe

Mr. Kidder’s best-selling books, such as “Among Schoolchildren” and “The Soul of a New Machine,” expanded the range and popularity of narrative nonfiction.

bostonglobe.com

David Hsu@dhsu.bsky.social · 5mo ago

"The goal, according to Matter Neuroscience, the company that set up the phone connection, is simply to get younger and older people to talk to each other ... to provide a connection between two groups that studies show are the loneliest in the United States." www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/11/m...

College students can ‘call a boomer’ from a new phone booth on Comm. Ave. Here’s the idea behind it. - The Boston Globe

The BU Pavement Coffeehouse was a natural location for the phone booth, with its college-age clientele and high foot traffic.

bostonglobe.com