Community highlights ✨

- @marekhonzal.com on immutability patterns in TS
- @davidalee.bsky.social on flash floods and TypeScript
- @mastrojs.bsky.social showcases the simplest web framework
- Marc Dahmen created a sorted-tree UI library in vanilla TS

In the coming days and weeks, I’ll be building a suite of data tools, alongside my writing on Alphabet Agency, to help prepare policymakers and the new administration confront the extreme weather crisis.

alphabetagency.substack.com

Why do I overlay the elections data? To impress on everyone the fact that Mamdani, Cuomo, and Sliwa voters alike are beset by extreme weather crises, and that it is incumbent on our new mayor @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social to prioritize weather intelligence and infrastructural resiliency for all NY'ers

one in Hollis, Queens, at the cross-intersection of 204th St and 100th Ave,

and the second in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at Kingston Ave and Rutland Rd.

Lastly, I animated my map to cover the late evening of the 30th into the early morning of the 31st. Over this period, the maximum water depth recorded was in excess of 23 inches, from two sensors:

Red columns, and their heights, indicate relative water depth at that sensor location.

I built a pipeline for the FloodNet data — which has a fantastic, quickly responsive team — and unofficial mayoral election data from the NYC Board of Elections.

Blue and white areas denote a greater and lower percentage of Mamdani voters, respectively.

To observe where flooding was most severe, I learned kepler.gl, an open-source TypeScript library for GPU-rendering of geospatial data.

Last Thursday, October 30th, NYC experienced one such event, in which two of our fellow New Yorkers tragically died.

(Source: @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/n...)

Especially to friends in climate science, hydrology, and civil and energy engineering who specialize in extreme weather disaster mitigation: the new administration will be best served with you!

Some of these folks would go onto become key figures in Zohran Mamdani’s astounding victory this year. It still is beyond surreal for me to witness former colleagues ascend to the apex of municipal power in New York.

The minutiae of legislating are those the public never sees: how to navigate the Intranet, edit and file a legislative bill draft (LBD), navigate the Consolidated Laws, and where to go to claim a government employee discount at the Downtown Albany Holiday Inn.

cc: @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

Please read and share widely!

alphabetagency.substack.com/p/new-york-c...

☀️ Although NYCEM has had a surge of hiring in recent years, most of these hires are driven by the City's delegating the response to the influx of asylum seekers to the city to NYCEM. Deliberate efforts must be made to increase the City's governmental capacity to address extreme weather hazards.

City and State policymakers should be prepared to account for funding cuts *when* they come. Disaster relief functions cannot be at the mercy of oscillating and turbulent politics.

Some insights I found:

💵 The contours of funding for NYCEM are enormously driven by grantmaking from the federal Department of Homeland Security.