Matthew Varona
@matthew.wiki
data, design, digital culture, birds
PhD student at University of Toronto working on visualization/HCI! Focus on visualization literacy 📊📖
they/them | https://matthew.wiki
PhD student at University of Toronto working on visualization/HCI! Focus on visualization literacy 📊📖
they/them | https://matthew.wiki
Unreasonably excited to present THEORY IS SHAPES at alt.vis this November! Read on to find out what the "BLT Sandwich Theory of Visualization Consumption" (and other shape-based shenanigans) can teach us about theorycrafting in research 🥪🧲🧊♾️
to appear at #alt.vis 2025: THEORY IS SHAPES
sure "theory figures" are great, but @matthew.wiki, @maryamhed.bsky.social, me, and Carolina Nobre wonder: why always a 2D plane or a flowchart? why not icebergs, horseshoes, Möbius strips, or BLT sandwiches?
arxiv.org/abs/2510.01382
#ieeevis #hci
sure "theory figures" are great, but @matthew.wiki, @maryamhed.bsky.social, me, and Carolina Nobre wonder: why always a 2D plane or a flowchart? why not icebergs, horseshoes, Möbius strips, or BLT sandwiches?
arxiv.org/abs/2510.01382
#ieeevis #hci
October 9, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Unreasonably excited to present THEORY IS SHAPES at alt.vis this November! Read on to find out what the "BLT Sandwich Theory of Visualization Consumption" (and other shape-based shenanigans) can teach us about theorycrafting in research 🥪🧲🧊♾️
Reposted by Matthew Varona
Now is a great time to read WIRED magazine’s 2015 feature story, “The Untold Story of Silk Road.”
There were good reasons why Ross Ulbricht was serving a double life sentence.
www.wired.com/2015/04/silk...
There were good reasons why Ross Ulbricht was serving a double life sentence.
www.wired.com/2015/04/silk...
The Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1
How a 29-year-old idealist built a global drug bazaar and became a murderous kingpin.
www.wired.com
January 22, 2025 at 12:48 AM
Now is a great time to read WIRED magazine’s 2015 feature story, “The Untold Story of Silk Road.”
There were good reasons why Ross Ulbricht was serving a double life sentence.
www.wired.com/2015/04/silk...
There were good reasons why Ross Ulbricht was serving a double life sentence.
www.wired.com/2015/04/silk...
Reposted by Matthew Varona
I don't know how many of y'all are watching the migration of American TikTokers to RedNote, but it's the most fascinating thing I've EVER SEEN HAPPEN ONLINE.
🧵
🧵
January 14, 2025 at 2:50 PM
I don't know how many of y'all are watching the migration of American TikTokers to RedNote, but it's the most fascinating thing I've EVER SEEN HAPPEN ONLINE.
🧵
🧵
Reposted by Matthew Varona
If you're interested in animating gridded data into discrete bins using webgl feel free to reuse our library: github.com/eurostat/reg...
The example shows a population grid of Europe being rolled out, and then groups the cells according to their populations.
#stats #webgl #cartography
The example shows a population grid of Europe being rolled out, and then groups the cells according to their populations.
#stats #webgl #cartography
December 11, 2024 at 2:26 PM
If you're interested in animating gridded data into discrete bins using webgl feel free to reuse our library: github.com/eurostat/reg...
The example shows a population grid of Europe being rolled out, and then groups the cells according to their populations.
#stats #webgl #cartography
The example shows a population grid of Europe being rolled out, and then groups the cells according to their populations.
#stats #webgl #cartography
Reposted by Matthew Varona
"How to make a good talk (and why are academics so bad at this)?" I wanted to give advice to an undergrad based on what I think is missing from (or wrong about) most advice out there on giving a talk.
Would love to hear people's thoughts on this (especially academics hehe).
Would love to hear people's thoughts on this (especially academics hehe).
How to make a good talk (and why are academics so bad at this)?
Some guidance based on what I think a lot of academics fail to realize about what makes a good talk.
www.frank.computer
November 27, 2024 at 12:00 AM
"How to make a good talk (and why are academics so bad at this)?" I wanted to give advice to an undergrad based on what I think is missing from (or wrong about) most advice out there on giving a talk.
Would love to hear people's thoughts on this (especially academics hehe).
Would love to hear people's thoughts on this (especially academics hehe).
Reposted by Matthew Varona
Hi, so I've spent the past almost-decade studying research uses of public social media data, like e.g. ML researchers using content from Twitter, Reddit, and Mastodon.
Anyway, buckle up this is about to be a VERY long thread with lots of thoughts and links to papers. 🧵
Anyway, buckle up this is about to be a VERY long thread with lots of thoughts and links to papers. 🧵
First dataset for the new @huggingface.bsky.social @bsky.app community organisation: one-million-bluesky-posts 🦋
📊 1M public posts from Bluesky's firehose API
🔍 Includes text, metadata, and language predictions
🔬 Perfect to experiment with using ML for Bluesky 🤗
huggingface.co/datasets/blu...
📊 1M public posts from Bluesky's firehose API
🔍 Includes text, metadata, and language predictions
🔬 Perfect to experiment with using ML for Bluesky 🤗
huggingface.co/datasets/blu...
bluesky-community/one-million-bluesky-posts · Datasets at Hugging Face
We’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.
huggingface.co
November 27, 2024 at 3:31 PM
Hi, so I've spent the past almost-decade studying research uses of public social media data, like e.g. ML researchers using content from Twitter, Reddit, and Mastodon.
Anyway, buckle up this is about to be a VERY long thread with lots of thoughts and links to papers. 🧵
Anyway, buckle up this is about to be a VERY long thread with lots of thoughts and links to papers. 🧵
Reposted by Matthew Varona
The Gini coefficient is the standard way to measure inequality, but what does it mean, concretely? I made a little visualization to build intuition:
www.bewitched.com/demo/gini
www.bewitched.com/demo/gini
November 23, 2024 at 3:31 PM
The Gini coefficient is the standard way to measure inequality, but what does it mean, concretely? I made a little visualization to build intuition:
www.bewitched.com/demo/gini
www.bewitched.com/demo/gini
Reposted by Matthew Varona
“The majority has spoken, and researchers are moving en masse” to Bluesky, says @shaine.bsky.social.
Couldn't help myself and had to write about science twitter, X, bluesky and "the migration"...
www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪
Couldn't help myself and had to write about science twitter, X, bluesky and "the migration"...
www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪
Like ‘old Twitter’: The scientific community finds a new home on Bluesky
After recent changes to Elon Musk’s X, a gradual migration turns into a stampede
www.science.org
November 20, 2024 at 7:48 PM
“The majority has spoken, and researchers are moving en masse” to Bluesky, says @shaine.bsky.social.
Couldn't help myself and had to write about science twitter, X, bluesky and "the migration"...
www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪
Couldn't help myself and had to write about science twitter, X, bluesky and "the migration"...
www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪
this, but microblogging websites
November 19, 2024 at 8:12 AM
this, but microblogging websites