Alex Lundry
alexlundry.bsky.social
Alex Lundry
@alexlundry.bsky.social
Data scientist, data visualizer, pollster and (adjunct) professor. Husband, father, dog-owner, musician, and prolific reader. Northeast DC via Northern New Jersey.
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New followers! I’m a data scientist for national companies, associations, foundations, and advocacy organizations. I previously led Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush’s presidential data operations. I teach dataviz at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins. Play piano and sing. Husband. Father to 4 kids and 1 dog.
Seems a little young to be teaching parameters, tokens, and quantization…
May 24, 2025 at 3:20 PM
This chart, from Ben Fritz’s excellent WSJ article on Marvel today, tells a hell of a story…
May 3, 2025 at 1:49 PM
More intermissions please! This is the (re)innovation that the movie theatre experience needs.
January 15, 2025 at 1:06 AM
And we thought cell phones at the theater are bad…
December 26, 2024 at 3:34 PM
Does it bug you as much as it bugs me that the shortest day of the year doesn't also have the latest sunrise and earliest sunset? I don't like that asymmetry...so I made a dataviz to help me better understand it and maybe see the underlying pattern better. 📊 #dataviz
December 21, 2024 at 5:59 PM
Apparently every holiday season student volunteers at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana run a 24-hour "Dial-A-Carol" hotline. A student volunteer will sing a carol of your choice! Try it - tonight is the last night! 217-332-1882
A Beloved University of Illinois Tradition Sings On: Dial-A-Carol Goes Live Dec. 12
Looking for something fun to break up your day this holiday season? Kids love using the phone? Call Dial-A-Carol. It's FREE!
www.chambanamoms.com
December 19, 2024 at 1:10 AM
Dick Van Dyke is one of the all time greats, and it's absolutely beautiful to see him get his flowers in this video by Coldplay and Spike Jonze:
Coldplay - ALL MY LOVE (Official Video) (Directors' Cut)
YouTube video by Coldplay
www.youtube.com
December 12, 2024 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Alex Lundry
"The Earworm Eraser is a 40-second audio track designed specifically to squash earworms — a song on repeat circling around and around in your brain that can't easily be shaken off."

All I want for Christmas is ... help getting this song out of my head: www.npr.org/2024/11/27/n...
December 3, 2024 at 11:45 PM
“The Hike” by Drew Magary: This is what you would get if Guillermo Del Toro rewrote “The Wizard of Oz” with a middle aged male protagonist. An engaging breezy read that gave me some super weird dreams and got me wondering if I had successfully gotten myself off of my own “path”. 4/5⭐️
November 30, 2024 at 3:27 PM
“The Kaiju Preservation Society” by John Scalzi. This book is pure bubble-gum sci-fi in the best possible way. So much fun. I’m sure the movie rights have already sold; what an incredible addition this would be to the Godzilla-verse! 4/5⭐️
November 26, 2024 at 5:10 AM
This is SO good. Worked really beautifully on mobile too.
Ever since The Nib ceased publication, I've been missing that quarterly does of thoughtful, deeply felt non-fiction comic storytelling. This, a story about baby monitors and also about parenting in an age of abundant data, hits that feeling perfectly www.theverge.com/c/24278723/c...
How to watch a baby
A digital comic by Kristen Radtke.
www.theverge.com
November 25, 2024 at 9:48 PM
Finally tried the Spotify AI playlist generator. It did not do well. First ask? Songs that are like the Beatles that aren’t by the Beatles. It gave me a list entirely of Beatles songs. After revision I asked it to only give me songs recorded after 2000. It failed.
November 25, 2024 at 12:18 AM
Also just finished “Nexus” by Yuval Harari. Not the tour de force of Sapiens or Homo Deus, but an important big picture look at AI. I have a ton of thoughts to put in longer form, but until then know this is a worthwhile “big think” book if you’re at all interested in our AI driven future. 4/5 ⭐️
November 23, 2024 at 10:51 PM
Just finished The Afterlives by Thomas Pierce, a sweet reflection on life, death, and the potentially soft barrier between them wrapped up in a cozy haunted house story. 3/5 ⭐️
November 23, 2024 at 10:40 PM
Two fantastic small music venues in DC - The Pocket and Rhizome - have been awarded a "Toolbox Grant" from the Live Music Society. Well deserved - congratulations! www.livemusicsociety.org/news/live-mu...
Live Music Society Announces $290,000 In Funding For 34 Small Venues in the U.S. To Assist With Needs That Enable Growth — Live Music Society
Surpasses $1 Million in 2024 Funding with Largest-Ever Toolbox Grant Round Non-Profit Has Given $4.1 Million To Support Small Music Venues Since 2020
www.livemusicsociety.org
November 22, 2024 at 9:50 PM
3 songs in and Father John Misty’s new album is EXCELLENT. Those strings on “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose”? <chefs kiss>
November 22, 2024 at 2:42 PM
This is great - will be useful for the peer review component of my dataviz course. 📌
I just uncovered a critique guide I wrote for a SRCCON session some years ago and I think it still holds up
November 22, 2024 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Alex Lundry
"Consistent differences suggest that singing isn’t just a by-product of speech, yet why it evolved is still unknown. Perhaps it developed to unite people, an idea called the social-bonding hypothesis."

Hidden Patterns in Folk Songs Reveal How Music Evolved:
Hidden Patterns in Folk Songs Reveal How Music Evolved
Songs and speech across cultures suggest music developed similar features around the world
www.scientificamerican.com
November 21, 2024 at 6:45 PM
👀 that 18-29 year old number - nearly half!!
% who have ever asked an AI chatbot for help with making a decision
U.S. adults: 27%
18-29: 47%
30-44: 36%
45-64: 18%
65+: 9%
today.yougov.com/topics/techn...
November 22, 2024 at 12:47 PM
Tonight’s sight reading project. There are some funky chords in there!
November 21, 2024 at 3:12 AM
This seems like it could be really helpful! 📌
10. Lots and lots of additional Bluesky tools.

This GitHub page has a long list of loads of Bluesky tools, including analytics, feed builders, migration apps, and more.

ht @timfduffy.com

github.com/fishttp/awes...
November 20, 2024 at 11:34 PM
Excellent breakdown; will be useful for my spring dataviz class.
Trying something new:
A 🧵 on a topic I find many students struggle with: "why do their 📊 look more professional than my 📊?"

It's *lots* of tiny decisions that aren't the defaults in many libraries, so let's break down 1 simple graph by @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social

🔗 www.ft.com/content/73a1...
November 20, 2024 at 11:31 PM
Ok, who at NY Times Graphics do I need to convince to update their neighborhood and fridge "guess how they voted" games with 2024 data? www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Do You Think You Can Tell How a Neighborhood Voted Just by Looking Around? (Published 2021)
An interactive, street-level tour of America’s full political landscape.
www.nytimes.com
November 20, 2024 at 2:17 PM
Gorgeous!
November 20, 2024 at 12:51 PM
This is mesmerizing!
As the nights draw in in the northern hemisphere here is a #dataviz to show night vs day at different latitudes as the year progresses. Note how at the solstices the speed of day length change slows right down meaning it takes a long time to change from those long nights and short days!
November 19, 2024 at 12:09 PM