I did a vis looking at Indonesian deforestation data: caleb-tutty.com/posts/indone... There is great data on Global Forest Watch too.

Indonesia’s forest, 2001–2025

Where tree-cover loss happened, which islands carry the story, and what came next.

caleb-tutty.com

Musk says not a single person has died due to him axing USAID. Sadly, part of my job involves tracking aid spending. So here’s a thread with just some of the people who lost their lives because of USAID cuts

One of the things the neo-Luddite Left really needs to hear a lot more is the Global South *loves* AI. So many people there see it as a an equalizer that makes them more able to compete in the global economy against those of us from wealthy countries.

Bill McKay@mckay4senate.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Why does BlueSky keep centering American and more broadly Western voices whenever we do AI discourse?

I started a blog! My data journalist bones were itching, so I wanted to find data to better understand my home - living in Indonesia. First maps I've made in a long time, but also interesting learning about the politics of boundaries here too. caleb-tutty.com/posts/indone...

Nine BPS indicators, one Indonesia grid

Province-by-province maps of poverty, HDI, stunting, GRDP, schooling, and more.

caleb-tutty.com

This @mcsweeneys.net piece is simply brilliant.

McSweeney's@mcsweeneys.net · 2mo ago

"The remaining 5 percent concerns only the final portion of the hill, the tendency of the boulder to inevitably roll back down to the very beginning, the eternal nature of my punishment, and the fact that Hades has not technically agreed to alter any terms."

Lancet predicts 14M more deaths in the next 4 years. That includes almost half a million children under the age of 5. www.thelancet.com/article/S014...

Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis

USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...

thelancet.com

Tom Hearden@followtheh.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A Harvard study just published estimates Elon Musk's destruction of USAID has already caused 600,000 deaths 2/3 of them children. That is his legacy in this world.

TIL crows only *look* black to us — they’re actually very colorful in ways human eyes are unable to perceive. 🤯 Remember that next time people can’t see your “colors”. Some colors just require different eyes.

I built an interactive guide on how GPS works! perthirtysix.com/how-does-gps...

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

An obscure methodological tweak -- a change in the source of data on the price of legal services -- resulted in meaningfully lower monthly PCE inflation in January. That's prompting questions about why the change was made and why it wasn't disclosed publicly. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/b... #EconSky

Change in Data Sources Led to Lower Inflation Reading

nytimes.com

Reminds me of Swift’s Modest Proposal.

Do they though

After working early career as a software dev for a mobile analytics startup, I’m imagining what adding ads to ChatGPT or Gemini as platforms looks like with regards to commercialising what they know about us as targeting attributes. And that’s pretty unsettling. theconversation.com/openai-will-...

OpenAI will put ads in ChatGPT. This opens a new door for dangerous influence

History shows voluntary safeguards fade as profits rise, risking a more persuasive new era of online advertising.

theconversation.com

Woah, this is actually pretty cool. I had not idea this existed: ase-lib.org

Python Coding (CLCODING)@clcoding.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Atomic Grid using Python

"I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace"

The super talented @pokateo.bsky.social made this for map nerds to demonstrate how projections can change how we see the map. Little known at the time it was also the reason for the dumbest president ever to destroy NATO.

(I show this map/diagram to my stats class every year. Tufte called it "the best statistical graph ever written.")

Aaron Sojourner@aaronsojourner.org · 8mo ago

ICE heads to Minnesota as the triple dip polar vortex starts

Is flashing red good?

Support mounts for comedian after Netflix special reported to the police www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/20... Although it seems the police complaint was mostly related to implying religious orgs gained mining concessions for supporting the Prabowo-Gibran ticket.

I wrote up this post after going through the Octoverse report for this past year! It's super interesting and kind of obvious that because humans aren't writing as much code across codebases, they're leaning into stricter tooling that offers better reliability. github.blog/ai-and-ml/ll...

Why AI is pushing developers toward typed languages

AI is settling the “typed vs. untyped” debate by turning type systems into the safety net for code you didn’t write yourself.

github.blog

i bought the domain ohhh.lol a while back just because and the other night i noticed it gets like 100-150 unique hits a day from people typing it in their posts and group chats where it tries to load the url preview. so i hope this annoys some people while they're trying to get their mack on

Editor’s Pick: Best of Data Journalism from 2025 From global conflict and climate disasters to AI, trade wars, and disinformation – data journalism helps explain a rapidly changing world. 🔗 Here's some top selections:

gijn.org

Editor’s Pick: Best of Data Journalism from 2025

twp.ai

New cherry blossoms chart just dropped

Chris Baraniuk@chrisbaraniuk.com · 8mo ago

NEW: Organ tuners have been leaving temperature and humidity records in little-known books for decades. 🎹 They reveal how temperatures inside churches have changed over time due to climate change and increased heating. A new scoop for The Reengineer! www.thereengineer.pro/p/church-org...

“When I woke up and read the news about the executive order, I was horrified and really mad. And when I get mad, I do math,” says Nichols, an infectious disease mathematical modeler and health economist.

Jason "Red5" Lyall@jaylyall.bsky.social · 9mo ago

By this time next week, the estimated deaths due to the illegal destruction of USAID and the shuttering of its aid efforts will breach 400,000. More than 260,000 will be children. Source: www.bu.edu/sph/news/art...

Ma'nene is a ritual in North Toraja, South Sulawesi, where people exhume the bodies of their loved ones from burial chambers, clean them, change their clothes, even serve their favorite food. It roots in ancient belief Aluk Todolo, "the Way of the Ancestors". 1/4 🧵 #WyrdWednesday

Disappointing and embarrassing. NZ not yet recognising Palestine: www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

NZ not yet recognising Palestinian state, Foreign Minister Winston Peters announces

The government has decided against recognising Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

rnz.co.nz

Great. Now I have to worry about radioactive shrimp: www.thejakartapost.com/business/202...

Industry pushes swift action on radioactive shrimp scare - Economy - The Jakarta Post

The government noted that only a few accredited laboratories are currently capable of advanced food testing.

thejakartapost.com

Aaaand they’ve just covered it up. Which is just another layer of irony… …given that this is state action against protest about state action against protest.

Mike Galsworthy@mikegalsworthy.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Bravo Banksy. 👏 “A new mural by elusive street artist Banksy has appeared on the side of the Royal Courts of Justice building in central London.”

Flurry of news about the Indonesian cabinet reshuffle - Sri Mulyani’s departure the biggest scalp and front page of the Jakarta Post. Not sure how many finance ministers can cause the stock market to fall on their resignation.

Today's task is to try and find a Shell petrol station which still has VPower fuel available. There is apparently a shortage which doesn't seem to affect the state owned Pertamina stations. Probably caused in part by the Pertamina watering down and reimport petrol scandal and import quotas.