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Ben Welsh

@palewi.re
1K followers 0 following 955 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 · 28/09/2026
Here's the story that inspired me to make this weird style of map. mastodon.palewi.re/@palewire/117336…
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 28/09/2026
You can find it in our growing library of graphics tools at reuters-graphics.github.io/graphics…
reuters-graphics.github.io
storybook - Storybook
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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
Unfortunately, that exercise is more possible than ever on the climate beat. Global warming is no longer some scientist's theory about a far-off future. It's a present reality that we can all see and feel.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 26/09/2026
But it's an example of the data journalism that first got me excited about pursuing our craft, where charts and graphs alone aren't enough to make the story, they're just the start. When we follow numbers out into the world, that's when things can really get interesting.
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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
It's the kind of sweep that wouldn't be possible without my many talented colleagues. I'm grateful to Simon Jessop, Kate Abnett, Alexandra Zavis and Rachel Armstrong for dragooning me into their platoon.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 26/09/2026
To investigate the impact of increasing heat, we toured the northern coast of Spain and trawled the English Channel, speaking with lifelong residents of coastal communities forced to grapple with the transformation of the marine ecosystems they rely on.
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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
It's the weekend's feature from Reuters, assembled by a global team of reporters and editors, and based on my analysis of the rising tide of sea-surface temperatures. www.reuters.com/world/europe/how-eu…
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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 don't know. OAuth would help me really level this up though!
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 13/09/2026
The code is open at github.com/palewire/datawrapper-mcp
github.com
GitHub - palewire/datawrapper-mcp: A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and app for creating Datawrapper charts using AI assistants.
A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and app for creating Datawrapper charts using AI assistants. - palewire/datawrapper-mcp
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 13/09/2026
Unfortunately, both of them are still mostly busted. So don't get your hopes up there. I used what I learned to file some tickets with the maintainers. If you have bug reports or feature requests with my side, I want to hear them.
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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
It now includes: * A system prompt env variable to pass in house style and newsroom rules * Tools for diagnosing your authentication * Async calls to the API * Better rate limiting * Friendlier errors
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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
* Still 100% open source on GitHub github.com/palewire/palewi.re
github.com
GitHub - palewire/palewi.re: The once and future blog
The once and future blog. Contribute to palewire/palewi.re development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 08/09/2026
* Offering improved site navigation * Continually backing up all links and assets at archive.org * Keeping a full second archive in a private bucket * Offering new bulk machine-readable endpoints for AI
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 08/09/2026
It's now: * Featuring posts that were previously only available on social media * Serving dedicated pages for all of my talks, with decks, videos and transcripts * Hosted by cheaper Cloudflare Workers instead of an always-on server * Wired up with the latest agentic dev tools
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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
You can read the reporting by my colleagues Krisztina Fenyo, Luiza Ilie, Gergely Szakacs and Gus Trompiz at www.reuters.com/business/environmen…
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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
We're far from done. Much more is TK as we continue to use our real-time tools to cover the slow-moving impacts of climate change. Stay tuned.
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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
It's a pure Python implementation of features buried within the GDAL geospatial toolkit, without shelling out to command-line interfaces like tippecanoe.
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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 · 20/08/2026
Quickly output GeoJSON I can put on a JavaScript based map.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 19/08/2026
You can see how I harness AI agents by checking out my template for Python projects, which I recently overhauled to better take advantage of tools like GitHub Copilot, Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex. github.com/palewire/python-open-sou…
github.com
GitHub - palewire/python-open-source-template: A template for open-source Python repositories
A template for open-source Python repositories. Contribute to palewire/python-open-source-template development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 19/08/2026
I hope to spin off more utilities from our work in the months ahead. Recent advances in machine learning make it easier than ever to package, document and release computer code.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 19/08/2026
You can read more about that at www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li…
linkedin.com
🌡️ Today, I'm happy to launch the "Reuters Climate Monitor," a live data dashboard that aims to track the slow-moving impact of climate change at the speed of the news. You can find it at… | Ben Welsh | 78 comments
🌡️ Today, I'm happy to launch the "Reuters Climate Monitor," a live data dashboard that aims to track the slow-moving impact of climate change at the speed of the news. You can find it at https://lnkd.in/eYTvYCBD This is the first in a series of steps that Casey Miller and I are taking to supply the scientific context that's too often missing from news coverage of extreme heat. It all started when our executive editor, Simon Robinson, challenged my group to improve our coverage of fast-moving catastrophes. Because most climate data is global in scope, slow to update and centered on the upward creep of arcane statistics, it often has little to add to the coverage of major news events, such as last summer's deadly European heat wave. Our view is that more timely climate coverage requires localized data that is easy to grasp and quick to update. After examining the challenge and consulting the world's leading climate experts, we learned that the solution didn't exist, but that an emerging set of public datasets made it possible. So we took on the task ourselves and developed a system that automatically compares today's weather forecast against the historic record, mapping out temperature extremes before they occur. It'll take its first turn as part of our coverage of heat at the World Cup, and then we'll be looking to apply it to this summer's heatwaves and the potential return of El Niño later this year. My hope is that we can provide data visualizations that help people better understand a changing world, and generate "nut graf" numbers that can lead our text stories by stating clearly the dangers of extreme heat. That's not all. We are brewing up something bigger with Maurice Tamman and company that I'm excited to publish later this year. And Casey Miller and I are on the verge of rolling additional features out of the lab, which I'll be sharing soon. I gave a longer talk about the project at a Reuters Events summit in Boston last month. I've attached a few slides from my deck to this post. As always, please tell me what you think, what sucks and what we ought to do next. | 78 comments on LinkedIn
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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
My take is that it fills a gap in the existing open-source ecosystem. The most common tools are great at generating the contour lines used to plot elevation, overlooking the polygons used in other cases, like the weather maps we're all used to seeing on television.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 19/08/2026
Feed isobands any gridded dataset — temperatures, pollution, whatever you'd like — and it will return filled contours that you can immediately publish with common platforms like MapLibre, Mapbox and Esri.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 19/08/2026
It uses the handy Python programming language to access GDAL, a powerful geospatial toolkit that can be difficult to use on its own.
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Ben Welsh @palewi.re · 19/08/2026
You can find it at palewi.re/docs/isobands
palewi.re
isobands — isobands 0.2.0.post1.dev1+g5f3f418f5 documentation
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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
You can catch up on the Reuters Climate Monitor and our ongoing campaign in my earlier post. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li…
linkedin.com
🌡️ 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… | Ben Welsh
🌡️ 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 heat in real time. 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. https://lnkd.in/g46TDEEP I can't say for sure, but I suspect we are the first outlet anywhere to provide this analysis. It's all due to rigorous research and development by our very own Casey Miller, who interviewed the leading scientists on population estimation and pioneered our approach. By generating "nut graf" numbers to lead our text stories, I hope the feature can provide the climate context often missing from news coverage by clearly stating the dangers of extreme heat. Stay tuned. (And let me know what you think of my attempt at isotypes!) There's a lot more coming. You can catch up on the Reuters Climate Monitor and our ongoing campaign in my earlier post. https://lnkd.in/gUQbJBZS
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