2026-02-21 02:24:33
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the administration’s “emergency” tariffs to be illegal. This stacked area chart from Lazaro Gamio and Keith Collins for the New York Times shows the effects of the ruling. I suspect this chart is going to see a lot of flux over the next few weeks.
Tags: law, New York Times, Supreme Court, tariff
2026-02-20 19:04:53
For Bloomberg, Krishna Karra and Stephen Wicary map blackouts in Cuba due to the U.S. administration’s block on fuel shipments.
Available electricity has plummeted since the start of the year. And it’s disproportionately affected rural areas and provincial hubs, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of satellite imagery. The level of light emitted at night in major eastern cities like Santiago de Cuba and Holguin has dropped as much as 50% compared to the historical average.
This analysis and others before it (see also the New Orleans power outage during Hurricane Ida and fading lights in Ukraine from war-damaged infrastructure) are made possible by NASA’s Black Marble, which tracks nightlight around the world and makes the data publicly available.
Tags: Bloomberg, Cuba, electricity, light, satellite imagery
2026-02-20 18:32:42
ProPublica and the Texas Tribune report on the spike of claims over the past year, which make previous volumes seem almost like nothing:
So far this year, immigrants are filing on average more than 200 of these cases, known as habeas petitions, daily across the country, with California and Texas accounting for about 40% of new cases, a ProPublica analysis of federal court filings found. To keep tabs on this historic rise, ProPublica is publishing a habeas case tracker.
Tags: deportation, habeas petition, ProPublica, Texas Tribune, tracker
2026-02-20 04:53:14
Paul Ford, for NYT Opinion, on his outlook for making software by vibe coding:
My industry is famous for saying no, or selling you something you don’t need. We have an earned reputation as a lot of really tiresome dudes. But I think if vibe coding gets a little bit better, a little more accessible and a little more reliable, people won’t have to wait on us. They can just watch some how-to videos and learn, and then they can have the power of these tools for themselves. I could teach you now to make a complex web app in a few weeks. In about six months you could do a lot of things that took me 20 years to learn. I’m writing all kinds of code I never could before — but you can too. If we can’t stop the freight train, we could at least hop on for a ride.
The simple truth is that I am less valuable than I used to be. It stings to be made obsolete, but it’s fun to code on the train, too. And if this technology keeps improving, then all the people who tell me how hard it is to make a report, place an order, upgrade an app or update a record — they could get the software they deserve, too. That might be a good trade, long term.
The trouble is that we don’t know where the train is headed. Some paint a hopeful picture of some kind of utopia, and others point towards a dystopia where a few benefit at the expense of everyone else. I have no idea. I remain cautiously pessimistic.
Tags: code, New York Times, Paul Ford, technology, vibe-code
2026-02-19 22:07:47
Over the decades, we can see the shifts (and non-shifts) in professional priorities and interests by looking at what college students are studying. The National Center for Education Statistics has kept a running tally of conferred bachelor’s degrees since 1970.
2026-02-19 22:06:22
This week is about how we rank from best to worst and use visualization to highlight order.
Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides.
