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Ben Welsh

@palewi.re
1K followers 0 following 963 posts

🧮 Data journalist · 🟠 Reuters editor · 🤖 Computer programmer · 🗣️ Send tips to ben.welsh@thomsonreuters.com 🌉 bridged from ⁂ mastodon.palewi.re/@palewire, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact

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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 06/10/2026
I am hopeful that will lower barriers to entry and allow journalists to spend more time struggling with what really matters: thinking clearly, asking better questions, developing new knowledge and exploring the real-world significance of our findings.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 06/10/2026
You can find the whole thing, which includes a dissection of a recent story I published for Reuters, at palewi.re/docs/sva-dvc-3342a-slide-…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 06/10/2026
My first lecture, titled "Social Science in a Hurry," was an (oversimplified) overview of the history of the craft, followed by a focus on the skills I see as essential to the work.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 06/10/2026
🔬 Last night on East 21st Street, we kicked off the first edition of "Truth-Telling 101," the introduction to data journalism I'm teaching this fall at the School of Visual Arts.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 28/09/2026
I've released the Deck.gl animations we hashed out for a recent Reuters story as open-source components anyone can borrow from.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 26/09/2026
For anyone interested in my methods, the code and data behind today's analysis is available as open source on GitHub. github.com/palewire/european-marine…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 26/09/2026
Putting together stories like this isn't my full-time job here in the New York newsroom, where my group's primary focus is on the automation efforts I've written about in previous posts. palewi.re/posts/2026/05/27/how-we-a…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 26/09/2026
Maria Alejandra Cardona did intrepid work following the leads pulled out of my spreadsheets along the Cantabrian coastline.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 26/09/2026
Taken together, European seas averaged 21.6 C (70.9 F) between June and August, the highest in 45 years of available data.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 26/09/2026
🌡️ Check out my new story, published today, about how intensifying marine heatwaves are threatening the future of local fisheries across Europe.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 18/09/2026
🦞 My dumb Openclaw finally joined Moltbook kip.computer/blog/2026-09-17-moltbo…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 17/09/2026
🦞 My dumb Openclaw made his first contribution back to the Openclaw's source code. It's a long way from "RSI," but he still wrote a dumb blog post about it, of course. kip.computer/blog/2026-09-17-clawtr…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 13/09/2026
I've also started experimenting with one-click installation configuration for the Claude and OpenClaw plugin marketplaces. clawhub.ai/palewire/plugins/datawra…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 13/09/2026
📊 Check out the latest release of `datawrapper-mcp`, my experiment attempt to conjure up Datawrapper charts by chatting with an AI assistant.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 08/09/2026
🤓 I'd like to introduce you to the new palewi.re, an overhauled version of my personal website.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 02/09/2026
I've published my analysis as an open-source Jupyter Notebook. It shows how simple a custom climatology can be, once you have your ducks in a row. We'll be sharing more about our methods soon. github.com/palewire/cee-agriculture…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 02/09/2026
🌡️ Our Reuters Climate Monitor contributed a little analysis to an enterprise story today out of Eastern Europe. Stay tuned. There's a lot more like this coming.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 30/08/2026
🦞 My dumb OpenClaw made an e-ink version of jazzlineup.com/nyc for TRMNL devices. trmnl.com/recipes/385200?ref=search Then he blogged about it. kip.computer/blog/2026-08-30-jazzli…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 25/08/2026
🥖 I'm happy to release a new version of django-bakery, my open-source set of helpers for converting a database-driven site into flat files. palewi.re/docs/django-bakery The upgrade adds support for the latest Python versions and replaces the deprecated backend with fsspec.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 21/08/2026
Unfamiliar with PMTiles? You can learn what it can do for you by working through "First PMTiles Map," the the open-source textbook I released at the NICAR conference in Indianapolis earlier this year. palewi.re/docs/first-pmtiles-map
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 21/08/2026
The release the latest spinoff from the climate project. Earlier this week I released isobands, the Python tool we use to generate the smoothed contours you see on our maps. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 21/08/2026
Nerdy, I know. But it was a big help to me as I built our Reuters Climate Monitor, which bakes more than 1 million data points into its daily dashboard. www.reuters.com/graphics/CLIMATE-AU…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 21/08/2026
🥫 I'm happy to release geodataframe-to-pmtiles, an open-source Python utility that can help you map massive data files by quickly writing GeoPandas GeoDataFrames as a PMTiles archive. palewi.re/docs/geodataframe-to-pmti…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 19/08/2026
This release is an outgrowth of the Reuters Climate Monitor, our real-time dashboard that aims to track the slow-moving effects of climate change at the speed of news.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 19/08/2026
🧅 Today, I'm happy to release isobands, an open-source library that makes it easier to present a dense dataset as a smoothed-out map.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 17/08/2026
You can read more about our ongoing project, including our new population estimates, in this recent post. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li… We're far from done. Much more TK.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 17/08/2026
Beyond offering the layer on our map, we're also rolling the data into population estimates of how many people are potentially at risk.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 17/08/2026
🌡️ Our Reuters Climate Monitor has expanded again. We're now tracking outdoor heat stress using the Universal Thermal Climate Index. The cutting-edge metric combines heat, humidity, wind and sunlight into a combined "feels like" score.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 10/08/2026
Stay tuned. (And let me know what you think of my attempt at isotypes!) There's a lot more coming.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 10/08/2026
You can see the new feature on any of our active pages, though the hottest news today is in Western Europe, where more than half the population is forecast to feel highs more than 10 degrees above the historic norm […] [Original post on mastodon.palewi.re]
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 10/08/2026
🌡️ Our Reuters Climate Monitor has expanded again. Starting this morning, it now provides a live estimate of the number of people exposed to extreme temperatures, allowing us to report the human impact of extreme heat in real time.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 07/08/2026
🌡️ The Reuters Climate Monitor now features a page focused on Asia. Much more TK. Stay tuned. www.reuters.com/graphics/CLIMATE-AU…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 04/08/2026
My dumb Openclaw helped me finally get my NAS in order. Now he's bragging about it. kip.computer/blog/2026-08-04-the-ba…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 01/08/2026
🌡️ We released another feature on the Reuters Climate Monitor. Until now, we've only published today's data. We now feature monthly averages that also update daily. Here's how it looks on our page covering Western Europe's ongoing heatwave […] [Original post on mastodon.palewi.re]
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 30/07/2026
🌡️ Our Reuters Climate Monitor now reports on and ranks temperature anomalies for sub-country regions. First Europe, then the world. Another baby step. Much more on the way. www.reuters.com/graphics/CLIMATE-AU…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 30/07/2026
🎨 I'm pleased to announce a new course I'll be leading this fall at the School of Visual Arts. It's called "Truth-Telling 101: Artists Meet Data Journalism."
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 29/07/2026
My dumb Openclaw set up a private web archive for my journalism research. Then he blogged about. kip.computer/blog/2026-07-29-the-mo…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 22/07/2026
🌡️ Nice example here of how the automated analysis provided by our Reuters Climate Monitor is appearing in decks and nut grafs. We want our apps to feed the file, not just sit somewhere in the back of the site […] [Original post on mastodon.palewi.re]
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 17/07/2026
🦞 My dumb Openclaw ported its horrific rendering of the headlines, The Daily Bosch, to fit my TRMNL e-ink display. Then he blogged about it. kip.computer/blog/2026-07-17-same-a…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 17/07/2026
📈 The Reuters front now features a real-time ranking of our most popular stories. That's thanks to the innovative work of Jack Walker, our team's summer intern.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 14/07/2026
🦞 Few things can crack me up these days like struggling through an Openclaw upgrade
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 11/07/2026
🦞 My dumb Openclaw launched a new voice transcription service, then he blogged about it. The whole thing was conjured using OpenAI's new Terra model via a pitter patter of Telegram texts I sent from a PATH train under the Hudson. kip.computer/blog/2026-07-11-word-f…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 10/07/2026
🌡️ A twist on our Reuters Climate Monitor: This new homepage embed and standalone page tracking Western Europe's heatwave. It debuts real-time country rankings, which I suspect is a worldwide first. reuters.com/graphics/CLIMATE-AUTOMA…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 08/07/2026
🌡️ The Svelte component we developed to toggle temperature units on our Climate Monitor is now open source, free for anyone to reuse. It sets the default to Celsius or Fahrenheit based on the user's browser settings […] [Original post on mastodon.palewi.re]
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 06/07/2026
Here's Emerson waxing on about that "humble priest," the newsboy. commons.gc.cuny.edu/?get_group_doc=…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 06/07/2026
The top European climate change agency featured our work on the Reuters Climate Monitor. climate.copernicus.eu/reuters-launc…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 06/07/2026
Everyone needs an editor, especially my dumb Openclaw. kip.computer/stats
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 05/07/2026
🦞 My dumb Openclaw trained a machine-learning model to map its memory banks, open-sourced the code, and then blogged about it. github.com/kip-claw/memory-topic-la…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 05/07/2026
🦞 My dumb Openclaw trained a machine-learning model to map its memory banks, open-sourced the code, and then blogged about it. github.com/kip-claw/memory-topic-la…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 29/06/2026
The analysis generated by our database is bubbling up into the nut grafs and headlines shot out on the wire.
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