iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Observable @observablehq.com · 26/09/2026

You can now create and manage teams in the new Observable, use Opus 5.5, connect to MySQL… but, most exciting, and by far the most overdue: you can now access SQL cells’ metadata fields by opening the cell menu with ⌃M. Keep those hands on that keyboard! observablehq.com/@observableh...

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Joshua Poddoku @joshuapoddoku.com · 24/09/2026

In August 2026, 86% of the Earth's surface was warmer than its 1991–2020 average for the month. In a stable climate you'd expect about half. Interactive globe, month by month, from NOAA data, made with @observablehq.com observablehq.com/@joshua-podd...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 23/09/2026

We hope this email finds you… like, at all. “Submarine cables laid in the bottom of the Earth’s oceans”, visualized by @vasturiano.bsky.social observablehq.com/@vasturiano/...

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Mike Bostock @ocks.org · 22/09/2026

A common pattern for SaaS but not good for community!

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Observable @observablehq.com · 22/09/2026

Pack four mirrored spheres inside the four walls of a tetrahedron (a pyramid). Paint the walls red, green, blue, and white. Then shoot rays out of your eyes. As they bounce, you find that the regions colored each color all somehow share a coastline. observablehq.com/@nxrix/wada-...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 21/09/2026

When you make a notebook on your own, does it belong to YOU, or to a kind of “shell company” set up in your name? It was once the former. Then, like many SaaS platforms, we moved to treat every individual as an on-ramp to a team account. We’re going back. observablehq.com/@observableh...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 21/09/2026

Stephan Schiffels, @stschiff.bsky.social, a researcher who sometimes uses principal component analysis for genetics, here illustrates the concept using EU flags. observablehq.com/@stschiff/pc...

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Jo Wood @jwolondon.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Want to embed your @observablehq.com notebook cells in a Powerpoint-style presentation? I've created a tutorial and an interface to reveal.js that allows web-sharable interactive Observable cells to be embedded in full screen presentations. observablehq.com/@jwolondon/o...

Example slide with a pale cream background from a presentation that uses slideshow.

The slide shows a large square labelled 'Camden' in its bottom-left corner and five rows of small squares forming 15 horizontal bars aligned from the right of the large square. Each set of three rows shows a pale colour and sometimes darker colour in green, red, orange, blue and cyan from top to bottom. They represent political parties Greens, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Conservative and Reform respectively. To the right adjacent to the three orange bars are text labels saying 'alphabetically first within party', 'alphabetically second within party' and 'alphabetically third within party'. These form part of a visual explanation of the chart. Below the square and annotation is a legend across the slide width relating each of the colours to the political parties and 'unelected / elected' labels above the pale and darker version of each colour.

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Mike Bostock @ocks.org · 16/09/2026

We’re improving the experience of individuals on Observable by no longer forcing everyone into a “team of one”. It’s tricky to simplify workspaces when you have users in every conceivable state! Here’s the flow we built, and you can read more here: observablehq.com/@observableh...

A flow chart showing the logic for Observable’s new user settings page; the flow branches initially for individuals with an existing personal workspace, individuals without a personal workspace, and teams; these branches branch again based on whether the team has more than one member and whether it is free.

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Voilà: Francis Gagnon @chezvoila.com · 09/09/2026

I'll update the starter pack. I'm looking for accounts that are posting dataviz regularly. It is not a who's who, it is not meant to bring followers, it doesn't surface rare posters. Its purpose is to bring dataviz content to its subscribers. Suggestions?

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Observable @observablehq.com · 09/09/2026

New podcast: Last week, we launched a total rewrite of notebooks. Contra Joel Spolsky’s advice, @ocks.org has done many rewrites, from TiVo to Protovis to D3, and itches to do many more. Why? www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP1R...

youtube.com

Never don’t rewrite | Observable Podcast

YouTube video by Observable

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Observable @observablehq.com · 09/09/2026

Just learned we’re on @chezvoila.com’s starter pack. Didn’t really know what starter packs are. Neat! Thank you! Good list! go.bsky.app/R3nSyyy

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Observable @observablehq.com · 07/09/2026

Simulation of binary black holes. Original concept by Jeremy Schnittman and Brian P. Powell svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13831 Relativistic GLSL ray-tracing notebook by @nxrix.bsky.social observablehq.com/@nxrix/binar... Starfield & orbit controls by @laotzunami.bsky.social observablehq.com/d/cca8d2013f...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 06/09/2026

Same! observablehq.com/@d3/equal-ea...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 05/09/2026

Lots of fixes/improvements since Tuesday’s relaunch: DatabaseClient backwards compatibility, BigQuery, more granular permissions, more prominent query cache ages, paste/drop files into editor. We’re sorry for the disruption and grateful for your feedback! observablehq.com/@observableh...

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Nicole Mark (she/her) @nicoledesignsdata.com · 04/09/2026

I had a few minutes between meetings this afternoon and tinkered with the new Observable chat. I attached a geoJSON file and made a beautiful map with a data table and bar chart alongside it in under 5 minutes. I can’t wait to explore it further.

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Mike Bostock @ocks.org · 02/09/2026

The new programmatic file attachment API is pretty cool and also powers our new fetch caching. observablehq.com/@observableh...

observablehq.com

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Mike Bostock @ocks.org · 02/09/2026

Our data connectors are serverless Vercel functions. We stream Arrow IPC back to the client, using Flechette on the client to read tables. The client also automatically saves query results to the notebook. observablehq.com/@observableh...

observablehq.com

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Mike Bostock @ocks.org · 01/09/2026

It’s finally here! So excited to be working out in the open again and for you all to try the new Observable. bsky.app/profile/obse...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 01/09/2026

For more than a year, we’ve been quietly building an all-new Observable. Today, that new Observable is live on observablehq.com. Read Mike @ocks.org’s announcement: observablehq.com/@observableh...

A screenshot of the new Observable interface, showing a notebook visualizing “Bollinger bands”. Several interface elements are labeled. Along the top: workspace menu, new notebook button, user menu. Along the right side: file attachments, dependencies, comments, settings, enable tinkering, show AI. In the interior: cell inserter, cell menu, cell toolbar.

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Observable @observablehq.com · 26/08/2026

Reminded of @domoritz.de’s thread by @keenancrane.bsky.social. When we developed Observable Plot in 2021, it was most notably “easier” than writing D3. When our agent writes Plot today, it is most notably “more coherent” (concise, compact, consistent) than having it write D3.

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Observable @observablehq.com · 21/08/2026

Helping people with notebooks is always a joy in that it teaches us about their domain. Jonathon Keeney had a random support question and ended up teaching us how the human genome incorporates something like git branching.

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Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #OTD 📊 💀Aug 13, 1882 William Stanley Jevons died in Hastings, England 🇬🇧 In 1863, he invented semi-log charts to show percent changes of commodity prices

Jevon's first semi-log chart, largely for illustrative purposes. Vertical axis shows prices of gold as a ratio of prices in 1860 to 1845.

Very grainy photo of William S Jevons, holding a tool that looks like pincers and a tray of 12 round white objects.

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Observable @observablehq.com · 14/08/2026

Missing Wednesday’s or planning your next eclipse? new.observablehq.com/@christophe-...

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Jo Wood @jwolondon.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I have a long term project walking the 'Wainwrights' (Lake District summits). To add interest I am doing them only using public transport and my feet (like Wainwright) and in book order (like Wainwright!). This weekend I completed Book 2. I've been mapping my routes using @observablehq.com Plot.

Map of the Far Eastern fells of the English Lake District. The map is a shaded relief in sepia tones reflecting the 'red' colour of Wainwright's 'Far Eastern Fells' book. Major lakes of Ullswater (top), Haweswater (right) and Windermere (bottom-left) are shown in blue. The town of Ambleside in labelled at the bottom-left of the map. On top of the shaded relief, all 36 Wainwright summits are marked as dark red triangles with text below each giving its name. These are connected with red dashed lines generated from my GPS walking tracks. The title of the map in the bottom-right corner says "Book Two The Far Eastern Fells".

Map of the Eastern fells of the English Lake District. The map is a shaded relief in green-grey tones reflecting the 'green' colour of Wainwright's 'Eastern Fells' book. Major lakes of Ullswater (top-right), Thirlmere (left) and Grasmere-Rydal Water (bottom-left) are shown in blue. The town of Ambleside in labelled at the bottom of the map.

On top of the shaded relief, all 35 Wainwright summits are marked as dark green triangles with text below each giving its name. These are connected with green dashed lines generated from my GPS walking tracks. The title of the map in the bottom-right corner says "Book One The Eastern Fells".

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Mike Bostock @ocks.org · 05/08/2026

Yep, it’s a completely different approach. Rather than compiling TypeScript to JavaScript before parsing, we now parse the TypeScript directly and then erase type annotations.

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Observable @observablehq.com · 04/08/2026

We’re at 199,950 public notebooks. Gonna need fireworks or something in a bit… new.observablehq.com/public

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Observable @observablehq.com · 04/08/2026

We’ve been rebuilding the editor atop the foundation of Notebook Kit and portable files in an open format. You can’t necessarily tell yet, since there’s no button… but thanks to James for seeing it! See also @nxrix.bsky.social’s remarkable depicted notebook: new.observablehq.com/@nxrix/binar...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 31/07/2026

With the memory bottleneck driving up the cost of compute, enterprises are trying to control costs. Save money with François Viète’s c. 1600 technique for the manual digit-by-digit calculation of square roots, explained & visualized here by @cyamahata.bsky.social new.observablehq.com/@christophe-...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 18/07/2026

“Cover a sphere with equally spaced dots” — original notebook by Jim Bumgardner, recently forked and fixed by John Wiseman. new.observablehq.com/d/15e996683f...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 14/07/2026

Here @laotzunami.bsky.social “visualizes datasets and their inner joins with proportional Venn diagrams.” new.observablehq.com/@laotzunami/...

A matrix of Venn diagrams. Ten sets, A through J, make ten columns and ten rows. At each of the hundred positions in the grid, a Venn diagram highlights the intersection between the two given sets. Along the diagonal, you see the set’s intersection with itself, i.e. the full set, each in a different color.

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Observable @observablehq.com · 13/07/2026

Here @fil.rezo.net reproduces @climatecasino.net’s chart, using warped gridlines to represent both the absolute temperature and the deviation from the historical mean for each day of the year. new.observablehq.com/@fil/godzill...

A line chart with an x-axis showing days of the year, from start of January to end of December; a left y-axis showing temperature, from 22 to 31 ºC; and a right axis showing deviation, from -3σ to 4σ. An orange line shows the mean, starting the year around 26.3 ºC and peaking in May around 27.8 ºC. Faint blue lines show a huge amount of historical data. A bold red line representing 2026 begins the year below the mean, just below 26 ºC, and continues to present day far above the mean, 29.4 ºC. Gray gridlines get “pinched” in the middle, representing narrower summer deviations, highlighting that the current temperature is almost 3.5σ above the mean.

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Observable @observablehq.com · 13/07/2026

In our latest podcast, @toph.me & @visnup.bsky.social explore the new community listings & nice touches in our new editor. (You can make a notebook in one click instead of three. Mousing over the left gutter doesn’t flash five buttons. Files work with versioning.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uDe...

youtube.com

Browsing the new notebook community | Observable Podcast

YouTube video by Observable

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Observable @observablehq.com · 09/07/2026

Wouter Schreuders made a scale that’s linear in the (foveal?) middle and logarithmic in the periphery, for exploring enormous ranges without losing concrete proportional grounding. observablehq.com/@wouter-d3/a... His reflections on the development process: wouterschreuders.com/adaptive-scale

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Sangyu Xu @xusangyu.com · 08/07/2026

I visualized my Apple Watch data across my second pregnancy: Travel the pregnancy state space with me: xusangyu.com/blog/08_appl... using a notebook on @observablehq.com, a very cool real time js notebook platform!

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Observable @observablehq.com · 07/07/2026

“Humble Data Miner” has been explaining concepts in finance etc. (in 한국어) for five years: new.observablehq.com/@humble-data... They talk through their notebooks on YouTube, here predicting eligibility point cutoffs for the Jeonse subsidized housing lottery in Seoul: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6062...

youtube.com

SH공사 제45차 장기전세: 일반공급현황 및 커트라인 분포도

YouTube video by 소박한데광부

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Observable @observablehq.com · 06/07/2026

Here nxrix (@nxrix.bsky.social, I suppose?) extends Plot with a custom mark rendering GLSL shaders to demonstrate domain coloring for complex-valued functions, with interactive pan and zoom new.observablehq.com/@nxrix/domai...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 06/07/2026

Here Monica Rizzolli describes her artwork “Forma e Fórmula”. Inspired by Johan Gielis’s “superformula” — a generalization of the superellipse — she developed a “curatorial interface” for curves and a “herbarium of generative flowers” new.observablehq.com/@dac4b2f6fec...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 05/07/2026

Revisiting this is a great idea by @thelatentspace.bsky.social, and it sent @toph.me down a rabbit hole: when you fill in all the years in-between, you get a lot of self-intersection. new.observablehq.com/@tophtucker/...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 01/07/2026

This is a Bluesky post about a notebook about embedding Bluesky posts that embeds this Bluesky post. new.observablehq.com/@tophtucker/...

new.observablehq.com

Bluesky

An Observable notebook by Toph Tucker

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James King @jamesking.io · 29/06/2026

Finding the new @observablehq.com unexpectedly useful for checking my maths notation and understanding. new.observablehq.com

A screenshot of an Observablehq.com notebook with AI assistant providing feedback on mathematical notes written in Tex and Markdown.

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Matt Khinda @mattkhinda.city · 17/05/2026

Simulated random walks along Manhattan's street grid. 🚶 Self-avoiding mode keeps the path clean, self-intersecting wanders truly randomly. observablehq.com/@mpkhinda/ra... #nyc #dataviz #urbanism

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Observable @observablehq.com · 16/06/2026

A lovely map-slash-timeline of upcoming World Cup matches, designed for pen plotter by @ehouais.bsky.social. observablehq.com/@ehouais/wor...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 10/06/2026

Antoni Gaudí, who died one hundred years ago today, picked up a fondness for the catenary — the hyperbolic cosine, the shape of an idealized hanging chain — working on suspension bridges. observablehq.com/@toja/catenary

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Posit @posit.co · 09/06/2026

Mike Bostock's first data viz library ran on three 1x1 pixel GIFs and raw HTML tables. It kind of made a bar chart. He went on to build D3. Listen now on Spotify (open.spotify.com/episode/01BJ...) and Apple Podcasts (podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...).

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Observable @observablehq.com · 06/06/2026

Inspired by Ian Quigley, trying to do our part… here’s the “significance filter” histogram reproduced in a notebook, with a parquet file of the underlying million z-statistics. observablehq.com/@tophtucker/...

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Observable @observablehq.com · 06/06/2026

Observable Plot hit >100k daily downloads yesterday for the first time! Literally “off the chart”! (Because we set the maximum of the y domain to the 99.5th percentile in order to occasionally give ourselves this satisfaction.) Congrats to Mike and Fil! observablehq.github.io/oss-analytic...

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