Ben Schmidt
@bschmidt.bsky.social
VP of Information Design at Nomic building new interfaces to embeddings; former history professor/digital humanist. Bsky for humanities/dataviz-y things, @[email protected] for techy stuff, the bad place for business.
https://benschmidt.org
https://benschmidt.org
And in the end it comes out the same. I continually marvel at how much these things are totally fungible. Like I choose different things from this dropdown periodically, but they all basically have more in common w/ each other than each does with its own company's offerings a year ago.
January 5, 2026 at 4:48 AM
And in the end it comes out the same. I continually marvel at how much these things are totally fungible. Like I choose different things from this dropdown periodically, but they all basically have more in common w/ each other than each does with its own company's offerings a year ago.
This holiday season, give the gift that lets your loved ones combine their affection for James Scott with their irritation that those "No Farms No Food" bumper stickers try to normalize agriculture.
December 10, 2025 at 3:21 AM
This holiday season, give the gift that lets your loved ones combine their affection for James Scott with their irritation that those "No Farms No Food" bumper stickers try to normalize agriculture.
Also I did not know that the tradition that a black man be register of the treasury, shown starting in the show, was so strong that *Woodrow Wilson* nominated a black Democrat to the post in 1913 until the Southern Democrats rebelled. That is mind-blowing.
December 7, 2025 at 4:24 AM
Also I did not know that the tradition that a black man be register of the treasury, shown starting in the show, was so strong that *Woodrow Wilson* nominated a black Democrat to the post in 1913 until the Southern Democrats rebelled. That is mind-blowing.
now we can use the 'equator' between the land pole and water pole (i.e., the points with the most land and water near them) as a first approximation to calculate the curve, and view it on a projection with those as the poles. That's faster than what I *was* doing, using latitude and longitude.
December 4, 2025 at 1:00 AM
now we can use the 'equator' between the land pole and water pole (i.e., the points with the most land and water near them) as a first approximation to calculate the curve, and view it on a projection with those as the poles. That's faster than what I *was* doing, using latitude and longitude.
OK, yeah moving to using the land-pole equator makes calculating the line much faster.
December 4, 2025 at 12:54 AM
OK, yeah moving to using the land-pole equator makes calculating the line much faster.
There are two other sets of great circles I don’t know about.
1. Those that maximize time over land.
2. Those that maximize time over water (distinct from the one with the longest unbroken arc over water, below)
3. Those that spent the same proportion of time over water as the earth is water.
1. Those that maximize time over land.
2. Those that maximize time over water (distinct from the one with the longest unbroken arc over water, below)
3. Those that spent the same proportion of time over water as the earth is water.
December 3, 2025 at 2:39 PM
There are two other sets of great circles I don’t know about.
1. Those that maximize time over land.
2. Those that maximize time over water (distinct from the one with the longest unbroken arc over water, below)
3. Those that spent the same proportion of time over water as the earth is water.
1. Those that maximize time over land.
2. Those that maximize time over water (distinct from the one with the longest unbroken arc over water, below)
3. Those that spent the same proportion of time over water as the earth is water.
They were bad at this in ways that IMO got a little interesting: they kept making really basic logical fallacies that I haven't seen the current generations do, although that's maybe because I only use them for coding.
December 3, 2025 at 5:47 AM
They were bad at this in ways that IMO got a little interesting: they kept making really basic logical fallacies that I haven't seen the current generations do, although that's maybe because I only use them for coding.
AFAICT there are infinitely many such splits, lying on a line that looks roughly like this: it's reasonably far away from the antipodal points that make the land and water hemispheres, but *not* just a great circle away from it. This notebook tries to find it:
observablehq.com/d/db36886905...
observablehq.com/d/db36886905...
December 3, 2025 at 5:37 AM
AFAICT there are infinitely many such splits, lying on a line that looks roughly like this: it's reasonably far away from the antipodal points that make the land and water hemispheres, but *not* just a great circle away from it. This notebook tries to find it:
observablehq.com/d/db36886905...
observablehq.com/d/db36886905...
Here's one such split, I think -- each of these hemispheres is roughly the same as the whole globe.
December 3, 2025 at 5:28 AM
Here's one such split, I think -- each of these hemispheres is roughly the same as the whole globe.
OK, so I just got really obsessed with a very arcane question. There are 'land' and 'water' hemispheres that maximize the amount of each (below). But can you divide the earth into two hemispheres that are each 29% land, 71% water, just like the earth as a whole? The LLMs said no… but I persisted.
December 3, 2025 at 5:25 AM
OK, so I just got really obsessed with a very arcane question. There are 'land' and 'water' hemispheres that maximize the amount of each (below). But can you divide the earth into two hemispheres that are each 29% land, 71% water, just like the earth as a whole? The LLMs said no… but I persisted.
I'll stay committed to the bit even if it doesn't work:
September 28, 2025 at 12:28 PM
I'll stay committed to the bit even if it doesn't work:
Ten-year changes in majors by field -- when I first made this for the American Historical Association in 2018, history had the bottom slot, so slightly nice to see that it's rising.
September 28, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Ten-year changes in majors by field -- when I first made this for the American Historical Association in 2018, history had the bottom slot, so slightly nice to see that it's rising.
@pengzell.bsky.social asks about the social sciences, which I haven't looked at in a while. Indexing these against 2008 rather than peak, and struck that economics has been on a downslope for 6 years now, while psychology, the worst discipline, continues to rise rapidly.
bsky.app/profile/peng...
bsky.app/profile/peng...
September 28, 2025 at 2:59 AM
@pengzell.bsky.social asks about the social sciences, which I haven't looked at in a while. Indexing these against 2008 rather than peak, and struck that economics has been on a downslope for 6 years now, while psychology, the worst discipline, continues to rise rapidly.
bsky.app/profile/peng...
bsky.app/profile/peng...
Some more granular disciplinary data, by raw number of majors, showing the span since the 1990s. Most of the humanities are at about the same raw counts they were in the early 1990s. (And also the early 1970s, for that matter, although it's not in this chart because the data's harder to harmonize).
September 28, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Some more granular disciplinary data, by raw number of majors, showing the span since the 1990s. Most of the humanities are at about the same raw counts they were in the early 1990s. (And also the early 1970s, for that matter, although it's not in this chart because the data's harder to harmonize).
Despite the gutting of the National Center for Educational Statistics, the dept of Ed *did* manage to release 2024 college major counts in the usual format, so I can run it through the same code I do every year. First off, the change since peak of the largest fields -- another year of drops.
September 28, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Despite the gutting of the National Center for Educational Statistics, the dept of Ed *did* manage to release 2024 college major counts in the usual format, so I can run it through the same code I do every year. First off, the change since peak of the largest fields -- another year of drops.
They’re cleaning up at the Herald Square station and briefly scraped the place back into December 1979. Hard for me to imagine living in such a two-tone world.
August 22, 2025 at 2:18 PM
They’re cleaning up at the Herald Square station and briefly scraped the place back into December 1979. Hard for me to imagine living in such a two-tone world.
I've been waiting for a cross-temporal spatial model like this a while, there's a lot of interesting visualization one can do! That said, who knows how useful these specific embeddings are. I used to tell graduate students never to use a plate carrée if they wanted to be taken seriously. And lo:
August 15, 2025 at 1:37 PM
I've been waiting for a cross-temporal spatial model like this a while, there's a lot of interesting visualization one can do! That said, who knows how useful these specific embeddings are. I used to tell graduate students never to use a plate carrée if they wanted to be taken seriously. And lo:
Also I always have trouble believing those numbers because it's only the final release for every year but the current -- but I guess in 2024 at least the new preliminary releases for completions for 23-24 came *after* the final release of 22-23 data… but will we even keep getting the final versions?
August 10, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Also I always have trouble believing those numbers because it's only the final release for every year but the current -- but I guess in 2024 at least the new preliminary releases for completions for 23-24 came *after* the final release of 22-23 data… but will we even keep getting the final versions?
"We do not accept AI-generated content into our visual library" cool Getty images, I guess it's just that "demaerre" took two almost identical robots into an elevator for a photo shoot, but one has three dots on its right arm and one doesn't.
August 5, 2025 at 11:37 AM
"We do not accept AI-generated content into our visual library" cool Getty images, I guess it's just that "demaerre" took two almost identical robots into an elevator for a photo shoot, but one has three dots on its right arm and one doesn't.
It's fun that the Fortune article saying historians are the #2 job affected by AI includes what's clearly an AI-generated stock image of a creepily female robot "teaching" (i.e., looking at a computer) while the real teacher gets fired.
August 5, 2025 at 11:33 AM
It's fun that the Fortune article saying historians are the #2 job affected by AI includes what's clearly an AI-generated stock image of a creepily female robot "teaching" (i.e., looking at a computer) while the real teacher gets fired.
IDK if $75m is a high enough price to get out of them, but honestly I think maybe it's ok? If not Waltz, they're saying it would have been the guy who spent his time as ambassador trying to convince the Germans they should give the far-right another go.
July 24, 2025 at 5:51 PM
IDK if $75m is a high enough price to get out of them, but honestly I think maybe it's ok? If not Waltz, they're saying it would have been the guy who spent his time as ambassador trying to convince the Germans they should give the far-right another go.
C'mon everybody why did we even make a social network exclusively for leftists with graduate degrees if we're not going to make #facultybratsummer a thing.
June 25, 2025 at 2:50 AM
C'mon everybody why did we even make a social network exclusively for leftists with graduate degrees if we're not going to make #facultybratsummer a thing.
Yeah Polanyi is definitely the minimal "if you're serious you do have to read this" book here One of the engineers DM'd me earlier today
June 20, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Yeah Polanyi is definitely the minimal "if you're serious you do have to read this" book here One of the engineers DM'd me earlier today