J.D. Porter
@jdporter.bsky.social
Literature/DH scholar, Price Lab at UPenn | I work on text mining, canons, literature and philosophy, and so on | Writing in PMLA, Synthese, The Atlantic, Cultural Analytics, the Stanford Literary Lab pamphlet series, etc
As a metaphor maybe
October 20, 2025 at 10:56 PM
As a metaphor maybe
Out of the cradle, endlessly boppin
June 28, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Out of the cradle, endlessly boppin
I will pretty much always participate in a ranking exercise—a habit that has been weirdly vital to my career.
The big caveat here is I only did one film per director, so this wouldn't just be a list of Kelly Reichardt films.
The big caveat here is I only did one film per director, so this wouldn't just be a list of Kelly Reichardt films.
June 26, 2025 at 9:04 PM
I will pretty much always participate in a ranking exercise—a habit that has been weirdly vital to my career.
The big caveat here is I only did one film per director, so this wouldn't just be a list of Kelly Reichardt films.
The big caveat here is I only did one film per director, so this wouldn't just be a list of Kelly Reichardt films.
Here's a graph of the Sufficient Bucket in every NBA playoff game so far this season.
The SB gives team A a score that team B will never reach in the game. The earliest one in these playoffs came when a Donovan Mitchell FT got CLE to 84 with 9:15 left in the third (MIA finished with 83).
The SB gives team A a score that team B will never reach in the game. The earliest one in these playoffs came when a Donovan Mitchell FT got CLE to 84 with 9:15 left in the third (MIA finished with 83).
June 13, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Here's a graph of the Sufficient Bucket in every NBA playoff game so far this season.
The SB gives team A a score that team B will never reach in the game. The earliest one in these playoffs came when a Donovan Mitchell FT got CLE to 84 with 9:15 left in the third (MIA finished with 83).
The SB gives team A a score that team B will never reach in the game. The earliest one in these playoffs came when a Donovan Mitchell FT got CLE to 84 with 9:15 left in the third (MIA finished with 83).
Inspired by a few people over the holidays mentioning Trump's "blowout win", here are a few tables (via Wikipedia) showing how narrow it was.
- Worse than every Dem win of this century
- 5th worst in the last 100 years
- All time, 49th place (out of 59)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
- Worse than every Dem win of this century
- 5th worst in the last 100 years
- All time, 49th place (out of 59)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
December 29, 2024 at 7:54 PM
Inspired by a few people over the holidays mentioning Trump's "blowout win", here are a few tables (via Wikipedia) showing how narrow it was.
- Worse than every Dem win of this century
- 5th worst in the last 100 years
- All time, 49th place (out of 59)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
- Worse than every Dem win of this century
- 5th worst in the last 100 years
- All time, 49th place (out of 59)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
This cutout has real “Coming this fall to CBS” energy
October 20, 2024 at 8:44 PM
This cutout has real “Coming this fall to CBS” energy
These are imprecise, because nationality is complicated, but I've always wanted a graph that shows the hilariously outsized presence of Sweden in the Nobel committee's conception of world literature.
October 10, 2024 at 4:58 PM
These are imprecise, because nationality is complicated, but I've always wanted a graph that shows the hilariously outsized presence of Sweden in the Nobel committee's conception of world literature.
Late to this, but I've had decent success with a dramatic network built from a Simpsons script. I use Gephi, so the materials are just edge and node tables.
Pro: small and easy to understand
Con: distressingly few students have seen the show
Happy to share if anyone wants the materials!
Pro: small and easy to understand
Con: distressingly few students have seen the show
Happy to share if anyone wants the materials!
October 7, 2024 at 8:07 PM
Late to this, but I've had decent success with a dramatic network built from a Simpsons script. I use Gephi, so the materials are just edge and node tables.
Pro: small and easy to understand
Con: distressingly few students have seen the show
Happy to share if anyone wants the materials!
Pro: small and easy to understand
Con: distressingly few students have seen the show
Happy to share if anyone wants the materials!
Finally, here's where Willie Mays lands on this graph. He's tied for third all time, behind Bobby Bonds and Son, but they obviously came later. Mays was like Shohei—revelatory.
September 30, 2024 at 8:21 PM
Finally, here's where Willie Mays lands on this graph. He's tied for third all time, behind Bobby Bonds and Son, but they obviously came later. Mays was like Shohei—revelatory.
This decade has been excellent for power/speed seasons, surely in part because of the rule changes. But this has always fluctuated from one era to the next. The season with the most entries in the top 500 is 1999, with 18. Meanwhile, as of 1949 there had only been 24 in all MLB history.
September 30, 2024 at 8:18 PM
This decade has been excellent for power/speed seasons, surely in part because of the rule changes. But this has always fluctuated from one era to the next. The season with the most entries in the top 500 is 1999, with 18. Meanwhile, as of 1949 there had only been 24 in all MLB history.
This is obvious, since he's got the best power/speed season, but it's still cool to see that no one with that many home runs ever stole as many bases, and no one with that many stolen bases ever hit as many home runs.
September 30, 2024 at 8:13 PM
This is obvious, since he's got the best power/speed season, but it's still cool to see that no one with that many home runs ever stole as many bases, and no one with that many stolen bases ever hit as many home runs.
A couple fun graphs about Shohei's historic 50/50+ season. First, here's a scatterplot of the 500ish best power/speed seasons in MLB history, scraped from baseball-reference.com. You can see how Shohei is off on his own, with both the best season ever and one of the most balanced.
September 30, 2024 at 8:10 PM
A couple fun graphs about Shohei's historic 50/50+ season. First, here's a scatterplot of the 500ish best power/speed seasons in MLB history, scraped from baseball-reference.com. You can see how Shohei is off on his own, with both the best season ever and one of the most balanced.
Having my spies send a million dollars to the weirdest guy on earth so I’lll be slightly more likely to die in a fire.
![Screenshot from a Defector article by Barry Petchesky. The highlighted part says: "it was his tum [sic] to repay the Turkish Official, by pressuring the New York City Fire Department ("FDNY") to facilitate the opening of a new Turkish consular building—a 36-story skyscraper—without a fire inspection, in time for a high-profile visit by Turkey's president."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bwyxtjsp3c7xtyivugvalksg/bafkreicf5psw3chvbltpeolj2idtlkjcroji4wad2hc67tc7qsyqd37ole@jpeg)
September 27, 2024 at 5:20 PM
Having my spies send a million dollars to the weirdest guy on earth so I’lll be slightly more likely to die in a fire.
Proud to be muttering into such a rapidly growing void
September 17, 2024 at 2:26 PM
Proud to be muttering into such a rapidly growing void
This Hemingway word cloud really runs out of steam after “WAR” and “Bullfighting”. No other writer comes to mind when we see iconic terms like “Yogi Johnson”, “ROOSEVELT” and “captives”. Neither does *this* writer, but I bet he technically wrote each of those things.
September 16, 2024 at 8:36 PM
This Hemingway word cloud really runs out of steam after “WAR” and “Bullfighting”. No other writer comes to mind when we see iconic terms like “Yogi Johnson”, “ROOSEVELT” and “captives”. Neither does *this* writer, but I bet he technically wrote each of those things.
Amazing work by the transcript team here, the space in "strong man" 100% accurately capturing Trump's profound misunderstanding of what people are saying when they describe Orbán to him.
September 12, 2024 at 12:07 AM
Amazing work by the transcript team here, the space in "strong man" 100% accurately capturing Trump's profound misunderstanding of what people are saying when they describe Orbán to him.
At the top of this screenshot, an AI-generated summary of a table Google took from Fox sports. It’s not correct, not in order, and doesn’t make any sense—did Kirby really throw fewer pitches per inning than there are outs in an inning? 1/4
July 6, 2024 at 3:23 PM
At the top of this screenshot, an AI-generated summary of a table Google took from Fox sports. It’s not correct, not in order, and doesn’t make any sense—did Kirby really throw fewer pitches per inning than there are outs in an inning? 1/4
June 19, 2024 at 1:20 AM
We find that the common story of increased diversity is true, albeit truer with respect to race than gender. But the biggest structural change has been a huge growth in the number of anthologized authors. 3/4
April 18, 2024 at 6:24 PM
We find that the common story of increased diversity is true, albeit truer with respect to race than gender. But the biggest structural change has been a huge growth in the number of anthologized authors. 3/4
Disappointing news for every novelist
December 6, 2023 at 5:54 PM
Disappointing news for every novelist
SFO: A robot coffee kiosk with a Bored Ape advertisement on one of its three iPads. The robot “waves” at passersby, heightening our sense that it is trapped in the coffee prep booth.
October 26, 2023 at 8:31 PM
SFO: A robot coffee kiosk with a Bored Ape advertisement on one of its three iPads. The robot “waves” at passersby, heightening our sense that it is trapped in the coffee prep booth.
Walked by this and thought it was one ad
September 4, 2023 at 5:35 PM
Walked by this and thought it was one ad