Matt Crespi
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mattcrespi.bsky.social
Matt Crespi
@mattcrespi.bsky.social
820 followers 480 following 3.7K posts
Social scientist. Researcher of networks, policy, and innovation. Enthusiast of maps, graphs and sandwiches. Former top 25 duck chess player.
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mattcrespi.bsky.social
Got our 2026 nature calendar from Meg Lemieur and @sarahmackattack.bsky.social, and it is amazing. Beautiful, funny, interesting, and even emotionally moving. When the year is over, we are going to be saving many of these pictures. Highly recommend.
Cover of the 2026 "love notes from nature calendar."
November 15, 2025 at 5:18 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Me, pulling out my fancy chef's knife to chop vegetables:
Drawing of Shane Falco (played by Keanu Reeves in the movie The Replacements) with his famous quote, "Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever."
October 8, 2025 at 6:28 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Pittsburgh seems to be on pace to quite accidentally have their 2nd successful "defund the police" movement. (The 1st being when they stopped making police do medical transport and adopted the model of a local nonprofit to scale up ambulance and EMT services, which we know now is way better.)
Two articles in someone's news feed (taken from a reddit post): the first is about Pittsburgh's drop in homicides and the role of violence prevention efforts, and the second one is about how "Frightening" it is that Pittsburgh police staffing has sunk to a 20-year low
August 1, 2025 at 3:57 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Yes. Yes we can.
Sus looking picture of Chuck E Cheese himself with the headline "SO COME ON DOWN TO MECHANICAL RAT PIZZA AND CHILD CASINO"
July 25, 2025 at 10:30 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
I don't know much about APSA, but those shirts come highly recommended by my wife, who uses this one to keep those fall vibes going year round:
Orange T-shirt with line drawing of a kitten sitting next to a jack-o'-lantern. The kitten is wearing a witch's hat and a cute little bowtie.
July 22, 2025 at 5:26 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Short SMBC comic strip. Academic: We have this thing in academia called "publish or perish." Person from anywhere else: Oh yeah, we have that. It's called "do your job or get fired."
July 19, 2025 at 4:08 AM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Breaking 100k was way harder than I thought it would be; respect to all the work you put into that video!
A 3km radius circle in St Louis with an estimated population of 100,603.
April 27, 2025 at 1:27 AM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Reskeet with an image of your favorite James Bond (wrong answers only)
Animated penguin looking intense while holding a shotgun, from the show Futurama
April 14, 2025 at 1:48 AM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Our new tradition: leaving a COVID test out for Elijah.
A home COVID rapid antigen test on a seder table next to a matzah plate containing 2.5 pieces of matzah
April 12, 2025 at 10:41 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Confused guy looking at butterfly meme, with the text "Is this urban decay?"
March 9, 2025 at 1:03 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
No more falling back! Demand permanent Daylight Savings Time!
Picard from First Contact giving his famous speech but edited to say: We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. We spring forward and we fall back. We spring forward and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!
March 9, 2025 at 1:01 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
You could probably save a lot of time and just use this one.
Map of the US labeled "every statistic ever" with the southeast mostly in red with some orange and light yellow, while NY, NJ and New England are green along with the West Coast and Minnesota. The rest of the Midwest is mostly orange, but PA through IA is mostly yellow... basically it's what you'd expect from lots of maps of the US where the states are color coded by some variable of social interest.
February 19, 2025 at 2:56 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
My wife and I have pretty similar taste in television and humor, and we both love Futurama, but for some reason I love this line and she really hates it when I say it. 🤷‍♂️
Fry from Futurama saying "Valentine's Day is coming? Oh crap. I forgot to get a girlfriend again."
February 14, 2025 at 12:46 AM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
I'm pretty surprised that they'd do a mayonnaise commercial at Katz's Deli. And I've never seen anyone getting mayo on a sandwich there, ever. So I looked up the condiment choices and apparently the proprietors and I have somewhat similar feelings, lol, good job.
Snippet from an online ordering form for Katz's Deli. Category is Condiments and the options are: None, Mustard, Reuben Dressing, or "Mayo (if you must)"
February 10, 2025 at 1:10 AM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
I feel like this country would be a better place if it were even remotely true that New Jersey spaghetti roads are unique.

(Four examples of road spaghetti interrupting major American downtowns)
Road spaghetti immediately east of Pittsburgh's downtown, cutting it off from the rest of the city. Road spaghetti from I-85 encircling almost half of Atlanta's downtown area with a particularly thick cluster on the eastern side. Embarrassingly sprawling spaghetti from I-64 and I-71 separating downtown Louisville from its waterfront. Road spaghetti in Cleveland just south of their baseball stadium. The friendly walkable area ends abruptly.
February 8, 2025 at 4:11 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Oh well in that case
Google Map showing Newark Airport and a Wawa a few blocks southwest of the airport's beltway of roads and highways.
February 8, 2025 at 3:05 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Though tell me this, are you willing to take a quick trip across a river?
Google Map featuring the middle half of Manhattan and some Jersey suburbs across the river to the west. There's a single red location identifying marker in North Bergen, NJ. It's a Wawa.
February 8, 2025 at 2:59 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
How I think I look when I teach / How I actually look when I teach 😅
A confident, smiling (perhaps even dashing?) Brad Boimler from Star Trek: Lower Decks holding up a PADD (like a computer tablet that contains information, though it's too small to read). John Hodgman from those old Apple commercials, wearing a suit that's a little too big and using a laser pointer on a black and white pie chart held up by an easel. An unimpressed Justin Long looks on as John is captivated by the chart he's explaining.
February 7, 2025 at 3:01 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Philly supports the post office.
It's a little hard to describe so bear with me. It's nighttime, outside the Philadelphia convention center (during vote counting in November 2020). Some people are dancing, many more are in a crowd watching and taking pictures. Two dancers are dressed up like buildings, that is to say they're wearing normal clothes but covering their heads are enormous (like the size of a whole other person) recreations of the White House and Philadelphia City Hall. Three others are dressed up like blue USPS mailboxes you'd find on the street, including the most prominent dancer in the foreground who just has legs and arms sticking out and the mail slot at the top is open enough to see out of. The image source is this article about how one of the mailbox costumes is going in the Smithsonian: https://www.inquirer.com/arts/philadelphia-election-dancing-mailboxes-spiral-q-2020-20210708.html
January 30, 2025 at 11:19 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Post a bridge from your photography or artwork.
Looking up at the underside of a large bridge at night, criss-crossed metal beams illuminated by surrounding buildings and lights over which the bridge towers. The lighting effect makes the metal look green and red against a black night sky with no visible stars.
January 23, 2025 at 10:47 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
You're not wrong.
Google Trends graph for the search term Greenland over the past month. It's pretty flat with a slight bump around Christmas and a huge almost vertical skyrocketing at the end of the graph.
January 8, 2025 at 1:03 AM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Makes perfect sense to me. These old Route 15 trolleys are absolutely the grande dames of Philadelphia transit. (And they effortlessly contain more authentic personality than Siri.)
Old timey electric trolley whose majesty and whimsy far surpass its humdrum modern street surroundings. The trolley car is green on the bottom half and cream colored on the top half, with a dark red stripe a little above the color transition, worn like a belt that never goes out of style. Windows are ample. There are front and rear doors wide enough to accommodate a stroller or a hoop skirt. A single silver headlight is on the center of the front. An elegant mode of transportation that you wish ran near your home.
January 4, 2025 at 12:22 AM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Everyone still trying to be COVID safe...
Image from the start (where it shows the title on screen) of the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Year Of Hell, Part II," except it's edited such that the II is now a 6 (four vertical tally markets and the cross mark to make the fifth count, plus another vertical one).
January 1, 2025 at 3:14 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
While everyone was celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah yesterday, we completely missed the 708th anniversary of the invention of the backflip.
AI overview from Google Gemini: John Backflip was the first person to perform a backflip, which he did in 1316 during Christmas. The story goes that he was a brave knight who leapt backwards, rounded head over heels, and landed upright. John Backflip's nemesis, William Frontflip, led a revolution to convince the public that John was using witchcraft for his stunt. John was then exiled and never seen again.
December 26, 2024 at 3:46 PM
mattcrespi.bsky.social
Similar energy.
11/3/20 tweet from The Economist saying "Tonight, Philadelphia is the most important city in the world"; quote tweeted by nat_lownes saying "tonight and every night dickhead"
December 22, 2024 at 8:32 PM