Gary Oberbrunner
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gary.oberbrunner.com
Gary Oberbrunner
@gary.oberbrunner.com
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Emmy-winning software dev, entrepreneur, scientist, sailor, jazz lover, vfx/film software guy, feminist, traveler. #longnowboston, #openfx, #emacs. More at https://oberbrunner.com
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Gary Oberbrunner @gary.oberbrunner.com · May 28
Check out this little web app I made for fun: deep-timeline.oberbrunner.com. It lets you visualize world events through deep time. It uses logarithmic scaling, so you can see how the present (a day, a week, a year) smoothly fades into the very deepest past. Part of my work with #LongNowBoston.
Deep-Time Timeline
deep-timeline.oberbrunner.com
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
adamsobel.bsky.social
Some reflections after returning back from a conference at which I and 20,000 colleagues learned that the Trump administration intends to dismantle #NCAR. This outrage should not happen. deepconvection.substack.com/p/save-ncar
Save NCAR
Field notes from New Orleans, where I and 20,000 colleagues learned that Trump intends to destroy the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
deepconvection.substack.com
December 21, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
drjamesehansen.bsky.social
Let’s see what we can learn from temperature change in the next two years – mailchi.mp/caa/global-t...
Also available on Substack: jimehansen.substack.com/.../global-t....
December 18, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
climatecasino.net
Yet another 'Science Talk' must watch.

"Well, I sure hope we can stay beneath 3°C because 3°C is a very different world. Really, really dangerous, scary world."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kcO...
Greenland Ice Sheet I Life on A Little-Known Planet I The Biggest Threat to Biodiversity and Planet
YouTube video by Science Talk
www.youtube.com
December 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM
gary.oberbrunner.com
Good article by @billmckibben.bsky.social in the @newyorker.com (sorry, paywalled): "A Low Point of Human Inaction on Climate Change" — www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...
A Low Point of Human Inaction on Climate Change
The second Trump Administration’s assault on the environment has been as damaging as expected, but other developments this year give at least some hope for the future.
www.newyorker.com
December 10, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
knizer.toot.boston.ap.brid.gy
Enjoying that #brattlefilm in #cambridgema will be running #terrygilliam's classic film #brazil for all shows starting the evening of 12/25-12/30. Lovely new 4k restoration, too! #bostonfilm #boston
December 1, 2025 at 1:42 PM
gary.oberbrunner.com
Great visualization of 15-minute cities via isochrone heat map: availability of services within a short walk from any location. Boston is near the top of American cities. Check it out at www.cityaccessmap.com
cityaccessmap.com map of Boston with a heat map of travel time to various services within a short walk, showing many neighborhoods that work as 15-minute cities.
November 29, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
davabel.bsky.social
Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management Unveils 50-Year Plan to Protect Coastlines from Rising Seas and Extreme Weather

insideclimatenews.org/news/2711202...
Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management Unveils 50-Year Plan to Protect Coastlines from Rising Seas and Extreme Weather - Inside Climate News
The state’s new ResilientCoasts Initiative lays out adaptation plans to protect people, infrastructure and ecosystems—a costly effort that officials say will save more than it spends.
insideclimatenews.org
November 28, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
freya.bsky.social
ahah IT WORKS look it's a C² dual quaternion B-spline!!

this is interpolating *poses* in dual quaternion form, coupling position and rotation, instead of treating them independently (this is a really neat thing!!)
November 26, 2025 at 3:10 AM
gary.oberbrunner.com
Now we see how much of the web depends on Cloudflare. Services we count on for work, life, and safety.
November 18, 2025 at 1:45 PM
gary.oberbrunner.com
electrek.co/2025/11/13/s... — fossil fuel generation will be flat for 2025; solar & wind outpacing new demand.
Solar and wind are covering all new power demand in 2025
Solar and wind growth met all new power demand in 2025, pushing fossil generation to stall for the first time since the pandemic.
electrek.co
November 16, 2025 at 1:33 PM
gary.oberbrunner.com
github is down. Pushes fail with "Internal Server Error".
November 13, 2025 at 3:01 PM
gary.oberbrunner.com
New paper: www.nature.com/articles/s43... shows strong AMOC weakening signal, happening since the 1970s at least. Does not predict collapse, but continued weakening.
Equatorial Atlantic mid-depth warming indicates Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown - Communications Earth & Environment
Mid-depth warming in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean serves as a fingerprint of a slowdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation on decadal scales, according to ocean model experiments, and...
www.nature.com
November 13, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
longnowboston.org
Boston Seaport: built despite #climate warnings, now one of the world's most imperiled neighborhoods. Join us for _Inundation District_ screening w/ director @davabel.bsky.social . Sun Nov 23, 1:30pm at Cambridge Foundry. Free tix: lnb-inundation-district.eventbrite.com. Be part of the conversation!
Inundation District: Film Screening with Director Q&A
Join Long Now Boston for a special screening of the acclaimed documentary Inundation District, followed by a Q&A with the director.
lnb-inundation-district.eventbrite.com
November 12, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
thierryaaron.bsky.social
I've finally got around to curating a selection of films about the #climate crisis 🎥

There's lot of mediocre climate films out there, but for me these stand out head & shoulders above the rest 🎞️

They make excellent resources for classrooms, lecture halls, or community cinema's 🎬

Thread:🧵Plz RT
November 1, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
anychart.bsky.social
How to make complex data easy to grasp?
Visualization helps bring meaning into view 📈

#DataViz Weekly shows how it works.
Latest examples 👇
- AI industry links @tijd.be
- U.S. funding halt @nytimes.com
- TikTok watch-time @washingtonpost.com
- Global sea temps @gary.oberbrunner.com
How Visualization Reveals Meaning in Data — DataViz Weekly
Discover how visualization reveals meaning in data, with new examples from De Tijd, NYT, The Post, and Gary Oberbrunner.
www.anychart.com
October 29, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
dhsu.bsky.social
It's almost as if a major portion of the city was built ignoring this: "In all, 99 percent of what’s been built in the Seaport in the last quarter-century is at risk of flooding by 2050, according to a recent analysis from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council." apps.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/metr...
A rising flood zone risk is affecting the Seaport, 10 percent of Boston's tax base
Buildings in the Seaport fund one-tenth of Boston’s property-tax base. Flood waters and sea level rise will soon put that at risk.
apps.bostonglobe.com
October 28, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
rahmstorf.bsky.social
Since 2013, five tropical cyclones would have been category 6 - if the traditional hurricane scale didn’t stop at 5.
Unlike, say, the Richter earthquake scale and the Celsius scale.

Hurricanes are getting so intense, scientists propose a Category 6
#Melissa
www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024...
Hurricanes are getting so intense, scientists propose a Category 6
The hypothetical new label could go to any tropical cyclone with sustained winds of at least 192 mph — an intensity that five storms have surpassed since 2013, the scientists said.
www.washingtonpost.com
October 28, 2025 at 4:30 AM
gary.oberbrunner.com
Largest *increase* in net CO₂ emissions was last year. 3.5ppm over 2023. More human-caused emissions, carbon sinks failing (both land & ocean), & wildfires fueled by extreme heat. CO₂ is now over 423 ppm. wmo.int/media/news/c...
Carbon dioxide levels increase by record amount to new highs in 2024
The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin said continued emissions of CO2 from human activities and an upsurge from wildfires were responsible, as well as reduced CO2 absorption by “sinks” such as land ecosyste...
wmo.int
October 19, 2025 at 11:58 AM
gary.oberbrunner.com
Great #NoKings rally on Boston Common right now! It's huge, the weather is gorgeous,and the energy is fantastic. This IS what democracy looks like!
Thousands of protesters on Boston Common Thousands more protesters on Boston Common, with signs
October 18, 2025 at 5:52 PM
gary.oberbrunner.com
Check out a new thing I made: globe-viz.oberbrunner.com. As a #sciviz and #climate guy I wanted to show what's happening to ocean temps. Please share!
Daily Global Sea Surface Temperature Visualization
Interact with a 3D globe to compare daily sea surface temperatures, anomalies, and trends using NASA’s OISST dataset.
globe-viz.oberbrunner.com
October 17, 2025 at 11:07 PM
gary.oberbrunner.com
What times we live in, when even David Brooks says "Will enough Americans rise up to reverse the tide of populist authoritarianism? The Filipinos did it under Marcos. One morning the autocrats woke up and were no longer in control; the marchers were. That needs to happen here." tinyurl.com/uvdtxne9
America Needs a Mass Movement—Now
Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades.
www.theatlantic.com
October 15, 2025 at 7:13 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
chanda.blacksky.app
MIT President Sally Kornbluth just issued a statement to the campus community saying NO to Trump’s authoritarian compact

“And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”
Dear Madam Secretary, I write in response to your letter of October 1, inviting MIT to review a "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education." I acknowledge the vital importance of these matters. I appreciated the chance to meet with you earlier this year to discuss the priorities we share for American higher education. As we discussed, the Institute's mission of service to the nation directs us to advance knowledge, educate students and bring knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges. We do that in line with a clear set of values, with excellence above all. Some practical examples: • MIT prides itself on rewarding merit. Students, faculty and staff succeed here based on the strength of their talent, ideas and hard work. For instance, the Institute was the first to reinstate the SAT/ACT requirement after the pandemic. And MIT has never had legacy preferences in admissions. • MIT opens its doors to the most talented students regardless of their family's finances. Admissions are need-blind. Incoming undergraduates whose families earn less than $200,000 a year pay no tuition. Nearly 88% of our last graduating class left MIT with no debt for their education. We make a wealth of free courses and low-cost certificates available to any American with an internet connection. Of the undergraduate degrees we award, 94% are in STEM fields. And in service to the nation, we cap enrollment of international undergraduates at roughly 10%. • We value free expression, as clearly described in the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom. We must hear facts and opinions we don't like - and engage respectfully with those with whom we disagree. These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they're right, and we live by them because they support our mission - work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law. The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone. In our view, America's leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that tree marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education. As you know, MIT's record of service to the nation is long and enduring. Eight decades ago, MIT leaders helped invent a scientific partnership between America's research universities and the U.S. government that has delivered extraordinary benefits for the American people. We continue to believe in the power of this partnership to serve the nation. Sincerely, Sally Kornbluth CC Ms. May Mailman Mr. Vincent Haley
October 10, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
jaydaronson.bsky.social
MIT rejects "the Compact"
orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...
Regarding the Compact | MIT Organization Chart
orgchart.mit.edu
October 10, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
nicholasbednar.bsky.social
One of the greatest errors in K-12 education, in my opinion, is prioritizing trigonometry and calculus over statistics. Yes, trig and calc are important for many professions. Statistics are important for literacy.
andrew.heiss.phd Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · Sep 6
oh noooo
September 6, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Gary Oberbrunner
davidamuller.bsky.social
Some good news 🧪⚛️
August 28, 2025 at 12:37 AM