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Using the NY Times Archive API, journalist Ted Alcorn built Below the Fold, a dashboard through which you can explore the last 25 years of Times coverage: 2.2 million articles containing 1.5 billion words. You can slice and dice this data in a bunch of different ways — it’s a fantastic resource.

One of the site’s sections is about obituaries. From that data, Alcorn produced this infographic of whose obits contained the highest word count:

As you can see, it’s a lot of world leaders, religious leaders, politicians, and white men. There only appear to be five women on the list. Notable non-politicians include Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Muhammad Ali, and Charles Schulz.

The whole dashboard is fun/enlightening to explore.

Tags: infoviz · journalism · NY Times · obituaries · Ted Alcorn

RightCon's organizers said Beijing was upset over over the inclusion of speakers from Taiwain.

Lettuce Grow's Farmstand is sure to impress, and it's 20 percent off for Mother's Day.

Am…am I “alternatively influential”? Defined roughly as “public thinkers and tastemakers who have real clout in their own demesnes despite only modest internet followings”.

IBM is betting that the next competitive frontier in AI-assisted development isn’t raw code-generation speed — it’s governance, auditability, and the

The post IBM Bob hits 80,000 developers with 45% productivity gains appeared first on The New Stack.

At WIRED Health, pioneering Alzheimer's researcher John Hardy outlined the stakes—and next steps—of where treatment is headed next.

This is excellent: Jamelle Bouie explains why he thinks the Supreme Court is corrupt and what we (through Congress) can do about it. Not all video transcripts work as text, but this one does, so I’m including his full remarks here: The Supreme Court is corrupt. You migh...

Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads. Get Platformonomics Updates By Email Service has been restored! This May Day we celebrate basic financial controls, one of the cornerstones of advanced civilization! My Writing Follow the CAPEX: Q1 2026 Scoreboard […]

This week, we discuss a wild message, a new anthology, and a visit to a museum.

And when the trumpets sounded, behold, the lamb opened the first four seals, letting forth four horsemen upon the world of man. The first horse, signifying War, was adorned with golden, ill-fitting hair. He was recognized immediately as the great protector of Macaulay Culkin...

"If we were in Serbia, we'd all get fired," Nikola Jokic said Thursday night, shortly after his Denver Nuggets lost their first-round playoff series in six games to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who were missing their best player, another starter, and also a third guy who had ...

For his latest video essay, Evan Puschak tells us about Un Chien Andalou, the pioneering surrealist short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. The film is particularly notable for a shocking shot in the opening scene, which, if you’ve seen it, you’ve likely never forgotten. Said Buñuel of the film:

This film has no intention of attracting nor pleasing the spectator; indeed, on the contrary, it attacks him, to the degree that he belongs to a society with which surrealism is at war.

You can watch Un Chien Andalou on YouTube:

One wonders what Buñuel and Dalí would have made of YouTube…

Tags: art · film school · Luis Buñuel · movies · Salvador Dali · Un Chien Andalou · video

Obviously, going to print with piddly retail squabbles is the stuff of hacks. But I'm hacky enough, and still stunned enough by the upselling tactics, that I just gotta share. I’ve previously noted that some power people here at Defector have occasionally suggested I try t...

One walk-off win can cure you of any emotional or intellectual ailment. The smack of the bat, the moment of anticipation as you wait to see if all you've wished for could come true, and the immediate, deafening roar of the crowd all inject you with a hope and belief that buo...

Welcome back to Make It Nice, Defector's best interior design advice column. Today, we have two home office cleanup situations and a delightful bird-related request. Selene asks: I work from home at a computer job and am a hobbyist musician. My partner, who lives with me,...

Access Now, the group that organizes RightsCon, says Zambian officials asked it to exclude Taiwanese participants if it wanted the event to proceed as planned.

Continuing to have some random errors in publishing today. I’m upgrading one of our servers now to address it.

I fixed a few bugs on the Rolodex yesterday — some of the feeds weren’t updating and modifying sites wasn’t working properly. (Members get the mini-feedreader view!)

Farnaz Fassihi, United Nations Bureau Chief for The New York Times, reports on the latest in the negotiations around the Iran war and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Photo: A pro-Iran demonstration in Iran on March 31, 2026. (Credit: 110 and 135/Wikimedia Commons BY CC 1.0)

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