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...

141

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/...

060

Observable @observablehq.com · 22/09/2026

Also looks good in CMYK. observablehq.com/d/af95f28e87...

030

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-...

3156

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...

290

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...

0101

Observable @observablehq.com · 09/09/2026

What was Mike’s first rewrite?

000

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...

05510

Observable @observablehq.com · 06/09/2026

Ah, don’t miss @fil.rezo.net’s parameterized version. (Based on reading Šavrič et al. and picking out the constants.) observablehq.com/@fil/paramet...

060

Observable @observablehq.com · 06/09/2026

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

1141

Observable @observablehq.com · 01/09/2026

Finally, read Mike verbatim on “why we continue to pour our heart and soul into this”:

A screenshot of the announcement, beginning:

The prevailing winds of technology — by which I mean AI — seem to be pushing humanity towards isolation and automation over collaboration and understanding.

We obviously cannot pretend that AI does not exist; large language models are astonishingly capable and are profoundly changing the world, and this change appears to be only accelerating. Likewise we cannot do nothing, “watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best” as Pope Leo writes. We therefore seek, in what little way we can with our humble notebook, to apply this technology in a way that encourages human understanding, collaboration, and creativity.

Lest we become overly enamored with AI, we remind ourselves:

AI is not a substitute for human understanding. We do not want a chatbot where you can ask a question and get an opaque answer. The answer isn’t the point. The meaning of the answer — its implications, its nuances, its accuracy, its effect on your future assumptions and decisions — is the point. This means an agent should show its work and you should understand its derivation. Large language models are great at generating code; Observable’s job is to make that code more interpretable and malleable. That’s why we care about the computational medium, where you can see the state of a program as its runs, where you can instantly modify running programs, and quickly add interaction or visualization. The medium is where humans and computers work together.

AI is not a substitute for human collaboration. We don’t want agents to replace human relationships. Observable is designed for collaboration — to quickly see what others are working on, to contribute to others’ work or riff on it, to reuse code, to ask for or receive feedback — and that extends to chats, too.…

141

Observable @observablehq.com · 01/09/2026

We reimagined how computational notebooks could work with agents as the primary interface. Our new agent-first notebooks, called chats, are radically different from our human-first notebooks and yet seamlessly interoperate with them.

A screenshot of an Observable “chat” interface. Several interface elements are labeled, notably: a prompt, upload file button, and model chooser at the bottom.

161

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.

16115

Observable @observablehq.com · 27/08/2026

When Plot launched some of us thought it’d be a huge problem that it couldn’t compile to D3, but the libraries ended up serving different audiences and we’ve gotten few complaints. Now, quickly asking an agent to inspect Plot’s generated DOM and write equivalent D3 yields somewhat spotty results…

010

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.

160

Observable @observablehq.com · 21/08/2026

They wanted a chart similar to a Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA), but they needed to summarize the effect across many GO terms at once, in a simpler and easier to understand way. Hence, the lollipop chart in this notebook: new.observablehq.com/@neurogenomi...

100

Observable @observablehq.com · 21/08/2026

Jonathon and his coauthors cover this in “Olduvai Domains Downregulate Mitochondrial Pathways to Promote Human Brain Evolution and Neoteny”, now in preprint: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1...

100

Observable @observablehq.com · 14/08/2026

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

093

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-...

071

Observable @observablehq.com · 18/07/2026

Not to be confused with randomly sampling points from the surface of the sphere, itself the subject of several notebooks: - new.observablehq.com/@mbostock/ra... - new.observablehq.com/@jrus/stereo... - new.observablehq.com/@rreusser/eq...

030

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...

1123

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.

041

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.

25523

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

092

Observable @observablehq.com · 07/07/2026

This one illustrates how problems overflow “main logic” (left box) to “fallback logic” (right) such as “religion, shamanism, authority, science and technology, family, acquaintances, the market”. Some ppl start w/ fallback logic (slide 2) or have little fallback (3). observablehq.com/@humble-data...

000

Observable @observablehq.com · 07/07/2026

We appreciate the rich variety and effort manifest in their thumbnails, which caught our eye. More typical of YouTube than of Observable!

100

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...

1102

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...

082

Observable @observablehq.com · 06/07/2026

Now @ehouais.bsky.social has added a visualization of the “Golden Boot” race for the most goals, with nice cross-hatched portraits. observablehq.com/@ehouais/wor...

021

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/...

0113

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...

1102

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

0122

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/...

281

Observable @observablehq.com · 06/06/2026

Ah, you ask, but how does that compare to the baseline growth of *all* npm packages (below)? Still relatively strong.

010

Observable @observablehq.com · 06/06/2026

Some great D3 packages also booming. d3-array, d3-shape, d3-scale — love it, makes sense. We’re more surprised by the similar boom in d3-time-format, which — though also a classic! — has long since been largely obviated by Intl.DateTimeFormat & its ilk. observablehq.github.io/oss-analytics/

110

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...

1173

Observable @observablehq.com · 03/06/2026

In 1943, Patrick Abercrombie wanted to describe “a general plan for creating ‘new towns’ but didn’t have the authority to designate specific sites for redevelopment. So, he decided blobs would do the trick.” @mattkhinda.city recreated the “potato plan” in D3: observablehq.com/@mpkhinda/d3...

1143

Observable @observablehq.com · 03/06/2026

In March, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived the Jones Act, which says only U.S.-made ships can ship between U.S. ports. Waiver stipulates that vessel movements be publicly disclosed. @laotzunami.bsky.social mapped them; they’re most commonly gasoline observablehq.com/d/3a87558830...

030

Observable @observablehq.com · 27/05/2026

Or @mootari.social’s exploration of Lee Stemkoski’s polyhedra npm package observablehq.com/@mootari/pol..., which in turn pulls from George W. Hart’s Encyclopedia of Polyhedra

030

Observable @observablehq.com · 27/05/2026

See also @makio135.bsky.social’s “Polyhedrons & lasers” observablehq.com/@makio135/po... and Platonic solids lineup observablehq.com/@makio135/pl...

140

Observable @observablehq.com · 27/05/2026

That’s by @paulchaikin.bsky.social. Or here’s one by @mark-mcclure.bsky.social, showing cutting a polyhedron into a net. observablehq.com/@mcmcclur/un... There are eleven ways to unfold a cube, which he collects here: observablehq.com/@mcmcclur/th...

120

Observable @observablehq.com · 27/05/2026

“[O]ur model is not the sphere, which is no greater than its parts, where every point is equidistant from the centre… Instead, it is the polyhedron, which reflects the convergence of all its parts, each of which preserves its distinctiveness.” Explore: observablehq.com/@pamacha/pla...

141

Observable @observablehq.com · 20/05/2026

Also don’t miss that you can click on edges and adjust their easing, e.g. to make them all linear and fast so there’s no pause between successive transitions.

030

Observable @observablehq.com · 20/05/2026

This resembles some of the transition diagrams in @jheer.org’s classic “Animated Transitions in Statistical Data Graphics” idl.uw.edu/papers/anima..., but makes the diagram itself an interface for constructing the chart.

191

Observable @observablehq.com · 20/05/2026

In this notebook, @laotzunami.bsky.social visualizes a state space of possible chart types and transitions among them along defined edges. Transitions between unconnected types are achieved by routing through intermediate types. observablehq.com/d/3c8b082818...

212627

Observable @observablehq.com · 19/05/2026

Lovely! Here’s a little suggestion to allow regenerating the cloud. Would love to see the other parameters pulled out too! observablehq.com/compare/64d4...

000

Observable @observablehq.com · 19/05/2026

Nice recreation of Perlin’s mrl.cs.nyu.edu/~perlin/expe... Java applet from… twenty years ago? More? (Perlin noise is from the ’80s.)

030

Observable @observablehq.com · 19/05/2026

Matt’s notebook compares 311 service requests and DOT pothole work orders (from opendata.cityofnewyork.us) to explore the decline in overall pothole reports; the seasonality; the geographic distribution; and the first 100 days of the last three mayors. observablehq.com/@mpkhinda/ny...

0103

Observable @observablehq.com · 13/05/2026

Instead of taking the function of x and y, the raster mark can also interpolate spatial samples. See documentation: observablehq.com/plot/marks/r...

000

Observable @observablehq.com · 13/05/2026

Amit Schechter reproduced @3blue1brown.com grids with Plot: observablehq.com/@meetamit/lo... Try fiddling with it. Plot’s raster mark is like a non-GPU shader; it takes a function of x and y that returns anything a color scale accepts. Here we change return value from a number to CSS colors:

1101