You might think that persnickety “coffee” order only impacts the customer and likely only slightly irritates the barista that has to make it but you are wrong. This person and millions like them bring these demands into the marketplace. These are the loudmouths that spew ill-informed political rhetoric to their equally uninformed network. They know nothing of economic theory, capitalism (the kind in books isn’t the kind you can actually implement in a democracy) and likely aren’t interested in the work of William Riker and his fellow equilibria theorists in a very partial branch of political science called Public Choice. "Public choice rejects the construction of organic decision-making units, such as “the people,” “the community,” or “society.” Groups do not make choices; only individuals do. The problem then becomes how to model the ways in which the diverse and often conflicting preferences of self-interested individuals get expressed and collated when decisions are made collectively." Go vote while you still have time. There is a binary choice this go around--democracy with fair and free elections or not-democracy. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself” (Federalist, no. 51)
I have to admit I am making headway on a moral dilemma that seemed intractable. How do you wrap your head around the daily challenge of really hating the industry you had been a part of for a few decades? To clarify, it wasn’t like I hated it. It was more like I thought we all had the same goal. Wasn’t improving health and patient outcomes a noble effort? It was until the slow drum beat of profits over patients grew louder and louder. Drive past your local hospital complex. The construction and expansion is a monument to feeding a system without checks and balances. There is no off-ramp. No plan for allowing GDP to decline or hold steady because our healthcare economy is shrinking due to a healthier population. Social philosopher Daniel Schmachtenberger questions if it is possible to have health in the U.S. when for-profit pharma industry sells people more drugs every single year creating one of the most medicated countries on earth. Or world peace with a backdrop of a for-profit military industrial complex. Begin to consider the perverse incentives we create that have yielded deforestation, climate change, plastic islands floating in our seas and the monetization of our offline lived experience to technology companies. Forrest Landry is a "philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher bringing thoughtful conversations about large scale complex systems, and at the same time, the thriving of all forms of life on this planet. He acknowledges the individual action of say a person or company and the relationship in the world where the action will have its effect(s). Look to the work of Donella Meadows where she explores different levers and how we can influence change in a system. "The world is a complex interconnected, finite, ecological, social, physiological economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple and infinite, our persistent intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.”--Donella Meadows
"That even if you got the tech issue addressed, even if you perfectly address that, you still have abstraction, extraction, depletion and pollution running on a finite planet and a finite ecosystem across every other domain."-- Tristan Harris, Your Undivided Attention Podcast you moved a problem from one area to another and actually a more sensitive area. And we see this with, well, can we solve hunger by bringing commercial agriculture to parts of the world that don't have it so that the people don't either not have food or we have to ship them food. But if its commercial agriculture based on the kind of unsustainable, environmentally unsustainable agricultural processes that lead to huge amounts of nitrogen runoff going into river deltas that are causing dead zones in the ocean, that can actually collapse the biosphere's capacity to support life faster than we're solving for a short-term issue that's important and driving even worse long-term issues.--Daniel Schmachtenberger We don’t need to be sad sack about these ideas and realities. Instead of thinking of an infinite number of different problems across a vast number of industries, we can model them as generator functions of existential risk. The reason we keep producing plastic, medicating the masses, and destroying our planet all reflect the same core set of values. The first generator function of existential risk is rivalrous dynamics. I might as well do this harmful thing because my competitor will do it if I don’t and put me at a disadvantage. The second generator function of existential risk is the subsuming of our substrate. Our democracy depends on the electorate paying attention--but in reality the substrate of “attention” has been eroded by social trust degradation. Pick your evil and it is pretty easy to identify the substrate being eroded. The third generator function of existential risk is exponential technology or technology that grows and improves exponentially. A crazy conspiracy theory once only existed in a dimly lit basement until technology evolved to disperse the ideas across the world in seconds. Tin foil hats unite. Ledger of Harms, Center for Humane TechnologyThese are topics we will continue to explore. Stay tuned...
I don’t know exactly what a zettabyte is but 94 of them represent the volume of data being produced in 2022. For comparison, that figure was 3.6 in 2008. Physiologically this is unsustainable unless our brains suddenly start to evolve to keep up--not likely. I lost count but I think it involves 21 zeroes. With 1 million petabytes in a single zettabyte, if a zettabyte was a year, merely 145 to 200 of them would stick us into the Mesozoic era. Why the focus on size? Often efficiency comes at a cost. If you are too tiny you can disappear. Similarly, if you become a behemoth, you run the risk of going extinct. Too much--everywhere--all at once. I am continuing the blog here but I have reverted to the free option at Weebly. As far as I can tell it simply shuts down a store that I don’t use and changes the link to the blog : https://datadonuts.weebly.com. More demands on my time makes me want to be more like the bee. I remain accessible. If you rely on a feed for your blogs that might need to be updated otherwise--I am still here. More than anything I simply want to share. I have been hanging out on Substack and these publications should continue to show up over there as well once I jitter a few settings. I like answering questions from the inbox in this forum. Let’s tackle a question about gathering image files. My answer is Google Earth Engine but I have about 6 different others I can consider. Hit me up on twitter if you want more in depth response but I think this is a good place to start. You will need to register for an account Google Earth Engine: I am a big fan because of the data catalog. Where are you going to store petabytes of data? No need to find out. I also use Copernicus Hub (Sentinel) and EarthExplorer (Landsat) but you are downloading those files onto your hard-drive. Good luck with that...although there is definitely a time and a place. I am a python person but I don’t let the javascript console scare me. You shouldn’t either. If you find a dataset from the catalog and scroll down, you will see the javascript code. Pick any catalog item you are interested in exploring. Click open in code editor and hit run. Once you draw a polygon on an area of interest you hit enter and run. You will now have a list of the bands in the image as well as the number of images available. These will be the specific images from your area of interest. I use the image properties to import the images into my QGIS or Jupyter Notebook projects--without having to store them on my hard-drive! Size matters, especially when you are manipulating spatial data files. Be efficient but scalable... The quote below is acknowledgement that the British Empire at its largest was like a dinosaur therefore it did not last. Compared to a bee that although quite efficient, was lacking influence due to its diminished size. Britain's most useful role is somewhere between bee and dinosaur-- Harold Macmillan, Former Prime Minister of Britain. "I no longer want reminders of what was, what got broken, what got lost, what got wasted”-- Joan Didion Odd for a data-centered person but I don’t routinely look at social media tallies. The temptation to write for the mean would likely be overwhelming. The one exception is around the end of the year. Here is a quick run down. Not to focus on me but to encourage you to take a look at your own. The blog: +900% for unique visits +865% for page views +966% average pages per unique visit The most popular entry: Nothing vast enters the world of mortal with a curse--Sophocles. This even outpaced my RSS feed data. If you have your Google analytics turned on you can readily see the top 10 posts and the behavior of everyone interacting on your website/blog. The good bits I recall are the majority of site traffic is coming from organic (60%) and direct (30%) with the latter being a much smaller share--this is what you want or so I am told. Top Twitter engagement for Substack post: Anticipate charity by preventing poverty--Maimonides Top Substack engagement on Substack: Mistaking mirrors for screens: its amplification not reflection I don’t like thinking of writing as a business. But it is curious to see whose eyes are looking at our words. Case in point--I subconsciously describe myself as a writer. I think that although I work as a data analyst, specifically a geospatial analyst, that fact isn’t nearly as important as storytelling. Many colleagues analyze data or have their brain engaged in some folly associated with numeracy and statistics--it is in the telling where things become illuminated. I hope you will visit the blog, maybe explore a few of the stories you missed. My favorite thing is when we have offline conversations. It is all about throwing things into the crucible and examining what remains. Let me know what you track and why. Oh. And have a lovely holiday season!
As much as I tried to thwart video-gaming in my household -- I was not successful. An upside to the pull of gaming was the impact it had on creative efforts to keep them both engaged. We traveled to the beach where games have always been verboten--hard to argue with the impracticality of lugging large computers onto a ferry or suggested family activities to offer alternatives to single-player games even while engaged with friends remotely. But alas, here we are. Even old analogs like me can appreciate the skills both have accumulated while building their own consoles from scratch, the crossover skills in navigating highly technical computer tasks, and even the lingo has helped me in my crossover world into technical platforms in healthcare. This is how I realized the similarity between the first-person shooter sub-genre of gaming and what we do in data analysis workshops. The truncated definition of first-person shooter below could be talking about a live interactive data analytics workshop right? Okay, okay, these sessions are light on death and gore but you can see the tangential application, right? ...in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the player character in a three-dimensional space. We have all been thrust into this loud data world. I don’t believe we can be in denial that it will impact everything we do. False interpretation of data is rampant. And if you by chance get something wrong--fear the pitchforks and tiki torches heading your way. How then can we differentiate our solitary work and connect with our colleagues? I have been reading a great little book, Art & Fear; Observations on the Perils (and rewards) of Artmaking* by David Bayles & Ted Orland. What makes it great? It tells you the truth. This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people; essentially—statistically speaking—there aren't any people like that. But while geniuses get made once-a-century or so, good art gets made all the time. Making art is a common and intimately human activity filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort. The difficulties art makers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar--Introduction to Art & Fear (David Bayles and Ted Orland) What we do as analysts, writers, or creatives is art. Make no mistake about it. And although this might sound harsh, nobody cares. But we can. I was empowered by rereading a few assumptions the book presents in an early chapter: Artmaking involves skills that can be learned "In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive." Art is made by ordinary people “It’s difficult to picture the Virgin Mary painting landscapes. Or Batman throwing pots." Making art and viewing art are different at their core “The sobering truth is that the disinterest of others hardly ever reflects a gulf in vision. In fact there’s generally no good reason why others should care about most of any one artists work. The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.” Artmaking has been around longer than the art establishment “Artist” has gradually become a form of identity which often carries with it as many drawbacks as benefits. Consider that if artist equals self, then when (inevitably) you make flawed art, you are a flawed person, and when (worse yet) you make no art, you are no person at all. It seems far healthier to sidestep that vicious spiral by accepting many paths to successful artmaking. I like to differentiate teaching a skill from teaching how to connect with the larger zeitgeist. If you don’t know these things you might stop your important work. The other day I was informed that a fairly lucrative grant/fellowship was not going to be coming my way. In all honesty I knew it was a long shot but it didn’t stop me from imagining the difference this could make on the opportunities I would now have the breathing room to explore. The feeling in the pit of my stomach launched a desire to write about it. Examine it on the page to see how I really felt and if it was indeed a barometer of my value. It brought me back to the little book about art & fear and helped me to reset. I occasionally need to remind myself of the writings of Seth Godin. It’s a cultural instinct to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission and authority that comes from a publisher or talk show host or even a blogger saying, “I pick you.” Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you–that Prince Charming has chosen another house–then you can actually get to work. I wanted to share these thoughts with you in case you have had a recent disappointment. Funny how it doesn’t matter if it was the one thing out of a dozen things that actually went right--that went wrong. It tends to bubble up and bring the effervescence of doubt up to the surface. You can’t lose out if you never engage. Get in the game... In 2010, researchers at Leiden University showed that playing first-person shooter video games is associated with superior mental flexibility. Compared to non-players, players of such games were found to require a significantly shorter reaction time while switching between complex tasks, possibly because they are required to develop a more responsive mindset to rapidly react to fast-moving visual and auditory stimuli, and to shift back and forth between different sub-duties.--Colzato LS, et al. (Wikipedia) Engaging Story with Place 12/10/21 1:00-2:00 pm ETHighlights from a few keynote speeches being developed for first quarter 2022...click to register. *As an Amazon Associate, Amazon donates a small percentage of recommended products to me.
Edward O. Wilson, famed Harvard professor and sociobiologist articulated the conundrum mentioned in the title of this article, "The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.” I like to begin all discussions of data by analyzing our Paleolithic emotional brains. There should be more questions in this era of technology and big data. We lack the capacity to comprehend the trade-offs and create governance around what this will mean for society. We engage with systems that create algorithms to market our attention as currency--and we behave like it will all work out in the end. So the big question of human history, and the first question of human history, is how do you get hundreds and then thousands and finally hundreds of millions of humans to cooperate? Which is our secret of success as a species. This is how we overcame the Neanderthals. They were bigger us. They were stronger than us. They had bigger brains than us. But we ruled the world and not the Neanderthals because they couldn't cooperate in larger numbers then, again, 50 or 100. We could. And what made it possible is not intelligence, it's imagination, and in particular, the ability to invent and believe fictional stories.--Yuval Noah Harari, Your Undivided Attention podcast Those of us working with technology, beyond our own amusement for our reptilian brains, have a responsibility. We need to be curious and expand our critical thinking. Remember the famous quote from Wayne Gretzky when asked why he was such a great hockey player? He replied something like, “I skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” We are all evolving into becoming data storytellers. But the part they don’t tell you about the stories we tell--they don’t have to be true. We have seen this play out in our own lives as "medieval institutions” become fodder for isolation, otherness, and quite frankly--become hackable. One of the main reasons I favor Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping is how we are able to bring location data to the narrative. The actual physical entity is able to be explored and interrogated. Information at the location is called attribute data and it tells about the features unique to that area vs. another location. What is the landcover like? Density of highways or roads? Building footprints? Waterways? A mountain or a river is an objective physical entity . Y ou can see it. Y ou can bathe in the river. You can listen to the murmur of the waves in the Mississippi. United States is not a physical reality . Y ou cannot see the United States. Y ou can see the Mississippi River, but that's not the United States. The Mississippi River was there two million years ago, the United States wasn't. The United States might disappear in 200 years or 500 years, the Mississippi River will probably still be there. So it's not a physical entity. It's a story.--Yuval Noah Harari, Your Undivided Attention podcast Follow along for more conversations about location and geospatial data. I mainly use open source resources so you can easily download and follow along. There will be an O’Reilly media book eventually. Currently it is in early release so you can certainly check that out as well, Python for Geospatial Thinking. I actually took a request. A reviewer was curious about Open Street Map and Python so--voila--we now have a chapter about OSMnx. The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind--Albert Einstein
Let me explain. Virtual conferences aren’t all bad. You don’t need to disrupt your life as dramatically, many are free or low cost, and I don’t care what anyone says you can network if you are thoughtful about how. Following the Esri User Conference earlier this week I received dozens of messages.
Many fellow attendees in the chat box alongside presentations would respond to something and want to have a follow-up discussion. As a self-proclaimed autodidact geospatial analyst my career was usually the talking point.
Although I have many years of being employed, I have had many more of being self-employed. You may have heard me state quite emphatically that I am indeed unemployable. This is true.
This wasn’t always the case. There was a time when I was more often than not hired right during the interview. Colleagues would find out where I was working and say, “Wow, I wondered who they hired” after they too had been interviewed. I had more work than I could handle but I managed. Until I started asking questions. I became unable to do status quo and deliver “good enough” or “this is what the client paid for” work. I also grew tired of all of the travel and endless meetings that in all honesty--could have been an email. Even my independent work was problematic. I thought you simply worked with every client that reached out. Some of them were assholes and I just thought that was part and parcel. I silently suffered, worked on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and missed a Steve Tyler concert. The irony with the Steve Tyler performance (part of a Qualtrics Conference) was that after hitting send on an ironclad deadline I was informed by automatic reply that the recipients would be out of the office for the next several days. I had a client once (if you are reading this I still adore you but let’s be honest, you always listened to the guys on the team over me) that paid me to leave a conference in Washington, DC to travel to NYC at 3:30 a.m. in the morning for an in-person meeting with his client. When I tried to interject an alternate perspective in another meeting I was jovially but firmly accused of “heckling” and there ended my contributions to the team culture. This one stung because I absolutely enjoyed the team--their culture, mission, and sense of humor. So I stopped spending the bulk of my days traveling, writing, analyzing, and speaking at private client collaborative meetings. Seth Godin puts it quite succinctly below. Its only 3 minutes so hit play and I will wait.
This is the bit of potential value to the inquisitive types wanting a career not only in geospatial intelligence but data analytics, or writing.
I already went for a run, had a healthy smoothie, wrote a blog (ahem), removed abandoned envs from my terminal (Conda-Forge friends), and created a timeline for what I need to deliver to my editor for our next meeting. I am writing a book, Python for Geospatial Data Analysis : Theory, Tools, and Practice for Location Intelligence The free sharing and teaching of open source is incompatible with the notion of the solitary genius
Are you on Clubhouse? I joke that someone left a door open in the hallway and I wandered in. I like the breaks from the computer screen where you can simply engage through your phone. Think of it like a podcast style conversation. Data + AI hosts a room, Data Geek Weekly. This past room was right up my alley.
The panel discussed social (structural) determinants of health with Michael Petersen, MD. I am not sure if it was Michael or Jeff that differentiated me from Bonnie Holub by calling me geospatial Bonny but it made me laugh all day. In the course of an open discussion I mentioned a few data resources that I wanted to share with folks in the room.
Here are the resources I mentioned. They might seem random but I think they were some of the tabs I had open at the moment so here you are...
Google Earth Engine
There is a location for everything so I have to start with Google Earth Engine (GEE) in case there are other interested in location intelligence. Click the button below and watch the glacier retreat. We were talking about climate change and urban heat islands (below) but it can be powerful to start with an upstream view.
IPUMS (CENSUS data and more)
I mentioned a heavy reliance on CENSUS data. I use American Community Survey for yearly comparisons as well as the PULSE Covid surveys. IPUMS is a great resource for a lot of the work I do because of the harmonization and detailed documentation.
Mapping Inequality
The better your data question the more exploration you will need to curate insights and better yet to curate empathy. We need to be open to aligning edges outside of what we view as our penumbra of expertise.
,I tend to use open source or freely available platforms and tools for analyses. I imagine how frustrating it would be to take a weekend workshop only to find out about a hefty price tag for you to continue your data exploration. I use QGIS (open source) but also rely on ArcGIS for quick maps. An ArcGIS personal 1-year subscription is $100 and well worth the investment.
This is an example of an urban heat island. I chose Charleston, West Virginia to highlight patterns not often visualized outside the typical locations such as Chicago or NYC.
I layered the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) neighborhood guides for you to explore. I briefly mentioned how land-use systems were locked in decades ago and continue to impact the temperature differentials in urban environments--and therefore health outcomes.
There is an abundance of federal, state, and community level crime data. One take-home message I will share is that data is collected differently and may not be able to be aggregated. For example, recent work in gun violence demonstrated that many districts were not reporting the data until the crimes were solved. I also realized that unless I requested data on the perpetrator most of the data was only about the victim. I was interested in the demographics of both.
The Crimemapping data below is from my city. The data is only available if your city subscribes to the service but as you can see, the types of crimes in your area are displayed. Crime data
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The practice of leaving bread on the hook is a beautiful Turkish tradition called, askida ekmek. You buy a loaf for you and an extra loaf that is hung on a hook. When someone in need enters the shop, they are gifted the donated loaf. This reminds me of my work as a data analyst. We serve our clients while simultaneously giving back to our data community through either mentorship, collaboration, or teaching insights learned along the way. |
“It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else's perfectly.”--Bhagavad-Gita
Hosting rooms on Clubhouse and being invited to speak on podcasts I am noticing a theme to many questions. Curiosity tends to vacillate between “how to get a job,” and “where to find the data”. The idea came to me today that perhaps folks are just worried about messing up. This doesn’t make sense. There is not a single correct way of following your path.
Two things I can share that might help. Build a platform. It can be on LinkedIn or any social media avenue of your choice. Create visualizations, stories, and conversations to be discovered. This is where you declare “this is me.”. It doesn’t mean you will become everybody’s cup of tea or be competitive for every job but it does provide you with the dimensionality of a person instead of a hiring algorithm or a flat paper CV.
Two things I can share that might help. Build a platform. It can be on LinkedIn or any social media avenue of your choice. Create visualizations, stories, and conversations to be discovered. This is where you declare “this is me.”. It doesn’t mean you will become everybody’s cup of tea or be competitive for every job but it does provide you with the dimensionality of a person instead of a hiring algorithm or a flat paper CV.
The data hunt is a little more straightforward. Head over to twitter and follow those of us that work in the geospatial space. A large chunk of the datasets I use regularly were discovered from colleagues by reading their research or following discussions.
What have I been up to?
What have I been up to?
Here is a recording of our podcast interview on LinkedIn Live.
A recent story I wrote on Substack provides a little context for my heart operation earlier this month. This is not jazz: last thoughts before sedation
I won’t bore you with the longitudinal path of my pre-existing condition—mitral valve prolapse—but it landed at myxomatous degeneration requiring surgical intervention sooner rather than later. So 1 week ago today, I had open heart surgery. The team was somewhat gobsmacked how I ran 267 miles just this last January, completed an ultra race in 2019, and hit the trails and roads on most days albeit a bit slower over the years but heck, I am also not as young as I used to be. If I was to be honest with myself, I think I knew it was coming. Echocardiograms were becoming dramatic and straightforward to read even from my perspective. |
“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I am an introverted extrovert”. I hear this claim quite often in this era of solitude, Zoom, and whispered declarations. Maybe it's one of those things you comprehend if you also share this archetype. The way I see it--I want to be alone--unless there is something worth venturing out for (personal). Or, give me a podium or a mic--its go time (professional).
As an independent data analytics professional I can attest to the fact that professional collaborations aren’t the most engaging or public "work environments". I am typically the defacto expert in the room and with the exception of a few IT folks--I am working this thing solo. The collaboration is in the form of selling the transition from spreadsheets to automated analysis, data visualization to data actualization, or building a more powerful analytics engine by including location intelligence in the actual workflow. I am basically stumping for my supper.
As an independent data analytics professional I can attest to the fact that professional collaborations aren’t the most engaging or public "work environments". I am typically the defacto expert in the room and with the exception of a few IT folks--I am working this thing solo. The collaboration is in the form of selling the transition from spreadsheets to automated analysis, data visualization to data actualization, or building a more powerful analytics engine by including location intelligence in the actual workflow. I am basically stumping for my supper.
Building and maintaining a busy spatial analytics practice reminds me of gardening. What can I say? The weather here in North Carolina has been spectacular lately. A friend recently notified me that she had been working in her garden and had some plants to share. She methodically roamed the space with a shovel either pointing to things we could dig up or digging them up herself sharing the stories and best plans for the plantings. Her generosity speaks for itself but she said something that I kept turning over in my head. In response to my numerous questions about how she established the garden, trying to find little insights to increase my chances of success--she merrily shared, “sleep, creep, leap”. Year 1 the plantings will sleep. Year 2 they will creep. And if luck has anything to do with it, Year 3 they leap.
SLEEP
The first thing to realize when attempting to establish a garden especially when transplanting--the first year, the plant rests.
This reminded me of my work in spatial analytics. My vision for my data professional life was verdant but needed more of a focus on location intelligence. Taking the time you need to study and learn skills is energy worth developing. Think of it as the dormant but important step of developing roots and foundational elements.
I return to workshops and scan the options for skills I may not have learned or used in a long time. If something thrills me and I find it useful I tuck it away for a webinar idea. Think about it this way--if you are amazed or surprised it is quite likely there are others.
This week it was a return to Google Earth Engine.
The first thing to realize when attempting to establish a garden especially when transplanting--the first year, the plant rests.
This reminded me of my work in spatial analytics. My vision for my data professional life was verdant but needed more of a focus on location intelligence. Taking the time you need to study and learn skills is energy worth developing. Think of it as the dormant but important step of developing roots and foundational elements.
I return to workshops and scan the options for skills I may not have learned or used in a long time. If something thrills me and I find it useful I tuck it away for a webinar idea. Think about it this way--if you are amazed or surprised it is quite likely there are others.
This week it was a return to Google Earth Engine.
CREEP
We finally have growth! The small little seedlings of last year arrive a bit more confidently this year. The flower bed seems a bit less embarrassed let's say. I am waiting for my peonies to take off but I think patience is called for.
Coincidentally, after a year of classes and workshops my geospatial skills are finding their way into new projects. Big data should be filtered through trends in location preferably over time. Nothing will be more important when we sift through Census data to see where populations may have been undercounted and how these profound insights will influence more than representation in congress. The electoral college will be redistributed (the number of votes is the number of house seats plus the 2 senate seats), Medicare/Medicaid spending, and about 300+ Census-guided federal spending programs.
We finally have growth! The small little seedlings of last year arrive a bit more confidently this year. The flower bed seems a bit less embarrassed let's say. I am waiting for my peonies to take off but I think patience is called for.
Coincidentally, after a year of classes and workshops my geospatial skills are finding their way into new projects. Big data should be filtered through trends in location preferably over time. Nothing will be more important when we sift through Census data to see where populations may have been undercounted and how these profound insights will influence more than representation in congress. The electoral college will be redistributed (the number of votes is the number of house seats plus the 2 senate seats), Medicare/Medicaid spending, and about 300+ Census-guided federal spending programs.
LEAP
In a garden and in other life endeavors there comes a time when the familiar becomes easy. Glancing out of the kitchen window in the spring I can see the clover thickening, the rose buds swelling, and a few flowering vines that I have long since forgotten the name of beginning to mark their renewal. As if on auto-pilot the garden begins to bloom-ish. There are areas that in some years get more attention than others but there is always a minimal viable level of activity that happens whether I go out there or not.
But if you want year 3 of plantings to be spectacular you need to cultivate them right to the end of their adolescence. If you have been nurturing and thoughtful, this is the year of abundance.
This is the time to take chances--leap if you will--in your career and life. I am easing into a comfortable routine of presenting remotely and leading workshops from my office chair. A few blossoms of opportunity are seeding in-person invitations but I am going to enjoy the final days of the old normal.
Check out Clubhouse. It is still in beta and open to iPhones only for now. If you need an invite hit me up. Its been a big leap but we have been hosting some interesting conversations.
In a garden and in other life endeavors there comes a time when the familiar becomes easy. Glancing out of the kitchen window in the spring I can see the clover thickening, the rose buds swelling, and a few flowering vines that I have long since forgotten the name of beginning to mark their renewal. As if on auto-pilot the garden begins to bloom-ish. There are areas that in some years get more attention than others but there is always a minimal viable level of activity that happens whether I go out there or not.
But if you want year 3 of plantings to be spectacular you need to cultivate them right to the end of their adolescence. If you have been nurturing and thoughtful, this is the year of abundance.
This is the time to take chances--leap if you will--in your career and life. I am easing into a comfortable routine of presenting remotely and leading workshops from my office chair. A few blossoms of opportunity are seeding in-person invitations but I am going to enjoy the final days of the old normal.
Check out Clubhouse. It is still in beta and open to iPhones only for now. If you need an invite hit me up. Its been a big leap but we have been hosting some interesting conversations.