"MzansiXchange is a national data exchange initiative to create an integrated data ecosystem that supports effective planning, policymaking, reporting, and service delivery" mzansixchange.treasury.gov.za
‘A Data Love Letter to the Subway’ www.pentagram.com/work/a-data-... "The installation visualizes each train line as a character whose unique qualities are extracted from MTA data"
"If you’re not designing systems, you’re just decorating problems" architectureau.com/articles/Fat... Re-reading this gem in preparation for today's course on system innovation
We need new models of professionalism that do not center novelty, but consequence. New ways of valuing labor that include the cost of wasted time, operational debt, and institutional indifference. New feedback cultures that reward slack, not just efficiency.
"What we need is practical knowledge. Understanding how things actually function through the accumulated wisdom of people who show up every day and make broken things work"
[Don't agree with everything, but certainly with this line :-)] "The gap between knowing and acting is often the most frustrating bottleneck in government feedback loop" fermonge.substack.com/p/government...
[Sigh] “Corals are a case where the benefits of reefs are just so enormous that keeping some alive, even if they’re genetically altered, makes the risks worth it.” www.noemamag.com/editing-natu...
🤗 to see @timothyaschuler.bsky.social on the work of Reimagine the Canals (+ my friend Angelyn!), who, in revitalizing the Erie Canal, "hope [to] serve as a model for how public agencies might approach aging infrastructure at vast scales, marrying... basic maintenance with... public access"
Last year, João Antônio Trindade Bastos was watching a football game in Aracaju, Brazil, when military police dragged him from the stadium in front of 10,000 fans. A surveillance camera had misidentified him as a wanted fugitive
Law enforcement doesn’t yet “have the capacity to look at these judicial matters beyond just asking whether a piece of evidence is real or not" restofworld.org/2025/latin-a...
[Somehow i had missed this] The New Formal - "Much of the rhetoric around impact, innovation and inclusion does not account for informality" nextbillion.net/new-formal-l...
Adoption is not just technical—it’s emotional (does it fit the craft’s rhythm?), economic (does it pay off now?), and relational (will this produce value for my peers/community?). Sustainable change must begin where artisans are, not where systems assume they should be.
"Adoption isn’t a simple checklist... Many artisan enterprises—even experienced social businesses—adopt new technologies only after years of ironing out concerns and building community trust" idronline.org/article/tech...
These luxury cloths, which were often favourably compared to Italian velvet, were first described in Kongo during the 16th century. They appear as currencies in both Kongo and the northern kingdom of Loango during the early 17th century www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/a-history-...
Data doesn't flow because of standards; standards emerge because data needs to flow. Data sharing thrives when it’s directly tied to a tangible outcome, be it a charged battery, a balanced station, or a compliant ride fermonge.substack.com/p/the-data-s...
"In 2020, Wellington’s city council decided to map 16 kilometers of the city’s streets using GPR and Lidar technologies. They were astounded by what they found. Just in that relatively shorter mileage they identified 100 anomalies"
