World Crisis Map (worldcrisismap.com)
Links, Resources, and Humans of Note (infrequently.org)
This page collects links to folks and firms sharing outstanding work on the web. If you're already caught up and just want to follow their ongoing adventures, import this OPML file via your feed reader.
Interactive Global Tension Map (worldtensionwatch.com)
Visualize current geopolitical events and conflict hotspots around the world. Select a country on the map or toggle between location-based and actor-based views to analyze tension impacts.
Global Wind & Surface Map (nullschool.net)
Eyes on the Earth (nasa.gov)
Monitor our planet's vital signs, such as sea level height, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, and Antarctic ozone. Trace the movement of water around the globe using the gravity map from NASA's GRACE-FO satellites. Spot volcanic eruptions and forest fires using the carbon monoxide vital sign. Check out the hottest and coldest locations on Earth with the global surface temperature map.
This is Not my Beautiful House (everest-pipkin.com)
Examining the Desktop Metaphor, 1980-1995
Instead, the new users (and builders) of the internet of the 1990s chose to invest in each other. They dedicated their work to the idea of a society instead of the idea of a desk, an office, or even a house. No designed metaphor of computing could have held against the emotional power of the early internet, even with all of its spatial anomalies, mixed metaphors, and emergent design principles. It was wild, and personal, and profoundly peopled. It was, after all, the widest of worlds.
The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced. (substack.com)
Last week, the Washington Post fired me.
The reason? Speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.
I believed in using the pen to remember the forgotten, question power, shine light in darkness, and defend democracy. Early in my career, late Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt told me that opinion journalism is not just about writing the world as it is, but as it should be. He told me we should use our platform to do good. That has been my north star every day.
My most widely shared thread was not even about activist Charlie Kirk, who was horribly murdered, but about the political assassinations of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, her husband and her dog. I pointed to the familiar pattern of America shrugging off gun deaths, and giving compassion for white men who commit and espouse political violence. This cycle has been documented for years. Nothing I said was new or false or disparaging— it is descriptive, and supported by data.
I was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions. Washington D.C. no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves. What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic.
Forward ever, backward never. As always, we move!
Karen Attiah’s Firing and the Failure of Corporate Media (pressingissues.org)
What happened to Karen Attiah should concern anyone who believes in the free exchange of opinions and thoughts. The billionaires and those who are capitulating to Trump will never save journalism. So let’s stop waiting for them to rediscover courage. The time is now to build and back independent platforms that protect truth, keep our communities at the center and refuse to punish free speech.
Jimmy Kimmel accused of workplace toxicity (laineygossip.com)
Frame of preference (aresluna.org)
Join me on a journey through the first twenty years of Mac’s control panels.
Even already in 1979, the Macintosh was envisioned as a home appliance akin to a toaster or a TV. This was documented in one of my favorite memos of all time. Get the machine out of the box. Leave the screwdriver in the drawer. There is no step three.
This early Control Panel has been celebrated since, even though there are mistakes here: the inconsistent Chicago 3, the top section being one pixel too short, and an occasional uneven border. The UI, like the whole Mac, is slow and clunky – you can see the panel, the windows, even the menus struggling to be drawn with required haste. (Only the mouse pointer is speedy, and it was a small miracle how it got this way.)
CFP Watch (cfp.watch)
Are We Decentralized Yet? (arewedecentralizedyet.online)
This page measures the concentration of user data on the Fediverse, the Atmosphere, and public git forges according to the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) and the Shannon Index.
HHI is an indicator from economics used to measure competition between firms in an industry. Mathematically, HHI is the sum of the squares of market shares of all servers. Values close to zero indicate perfectly competitive markets (eg. many servers, with users spread evenly), while values close to 10000 indicate highly concentrated monopolies (eg. most users on a single server). In economics, values below 100 are considered "Highly Competitive", below 1500 is "Unconcentrated", and above 2500 is considered "Highly Concentrated".
The Shannon Index is an entropy-based measure used in ecological studies. It is computed the same as Shannon entropy using the natural log: the negative sum over all servers of the "market share" times the log of the market share. Lower values indicate lower entropy (a high concentration of one species), while higher values indicate a more even population. In this context, the maximum value is the number of servers, which would mean that all servers have equal population.
UX Lexicon (curiositytank.com)
Treepedia (mit.edu)
Treepedia measures the canopy cover in cities. Rather than count the individual number of trees, we’ve developed a scaleable and universally applicable method by analyzing the amount of green perceived while walking down the street. The visualization maps street-level perception only, so your favorite parks aren't included! Presented here is preliminary selection of global cities.