Max Harlow

Slightly surprised to discover I've been referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for war crimes.

I Responded to One of the Spam Texts From a “Recruiter”—Then Took the Job. It Got Weirder Than I Could Have Imagined. The story of “Cathy,” my scammer.

i got one of those low effort spam texts from "Indeed," offering a low effort, well-paid remote job. I spent the last two months working in a Filipino clickfarm, for a very disappointed woman named Cathy. slate.com/technology/2...

Journocoders: The art of data journalism · Luma This month we'll be learning 'the art of data journalism', an introduction covering all the basic skills you need to find and tell stories with data. We'll be…

Registrations are now open for August. Come along and learn about the art of data journalism! 🎨 We're covering all the basic skills you need to find and tell stories with data lu.ma/nr7euafr

Fuzzy matching, but for concepts – Rui Barros There's a special kind of despair that comes with staring at two datasets that should obviously connect, but refuse to play nice. You know they belong together but no fuzzy matching technique can help...

How @zevolta97.bsky.social and I zero-shot our way through conceptual matching.

An AI slop factory apparently tried to rewrite our article about AI not replacing workers en masse, but hit the paywall... so just summarised the paywall. If this is the robot that takes my job I'll be v embarrassed

FT readers having fun in the comments

One of the funniest news diagrams I've ever seen.

I Built The Torment Nexus (Political Podcast Edition) Six years ago cartoonist Zach Weinersmith made a joke about a 24/7 AI podcast endlessly talking about polling numbers. I've made it a reality.

Six years ago @zachweinersmith.bsky.social made a joke about a 24/7 AI podcast endlessly talking about polling numbers. I’ve made it a reality.

open.substack.com/pub/techtris...

Journocoders: Data visualisation for exploring and communicating with Let's Plot · Luma This month we'll be learning how to use data visualisation to explore a dataset and then to communicate your findings to others using Let's Plot. Exploratory…

RSVPs are now open for July! Come along and learn how to use data visualisation for exploring and communicating with Let's Plot! 📊 lu.ma/shr1kete

Opinion | The Man Putin Couldn’t Kill

In which I get to profile Christo (gift link). The Man Putin Couldn’t Kill www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/o...

Building interactive web apps with Streamlit, Wed, Jun 11, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup This month we'll be learning how to build interactive web apps using Streamlit. Streamlit is an easy-to-use yet powerful way to quickly build interactive web applications

RSVPs are now open for June! Come along and learn how to build interactive web apps with Streamlit! 🔥 www.meetup.com/journocoders...

Back in Mechelen for #eijc25

UK Visa Scams Squeeze Millions From Would-Be Care Workers Recent changes to immigration policy won’t do anything for people who’ve been exploited while seeking jobs in the UK. But they may worsen the care-worker shortage.

For the last year, I’ve been working on an investigation that’s left me staggered. It’s a damning indictment of the UK’s care sector, & the migration system which has allowed millions of ££s to be plundered from communities in developing countries. Free link: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Free “most read with a bullet” feature idea for every national newsdesk: The UK’s longest direct train journey between Aberdeen and Penzance runs for the final time on Friday, send the reporter you hate the most to spend the whole day on it.

Finding big stories in huge data sets with Google Cloud, Tue, May 13, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup This month we'll be learning how to find stories in huge data sets with Google Cloud. Once you've got more than a million rows of data, Excel won't work. Once you've got h

RSVPs are now open for May! Come along and learn how to find big stories in huge data sets with Google Cloud ☁️ www.meetup.com/journocoders...

Space journalism: analyse the world using satellites with Google Earth Engine, Wed, Apr 9, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup This month we'll be learning about space journalism: how to analyse the world using satellites with Google Earth Engine. Sensors on board satellites allow us to understand

RSVPs are now open for April. Come along to learn about space journalism! We'll be analysing the world using satellites with Google Earth Engine 🛰️ www.meetup.com/journocoders...

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

American war planning usually takes place in highly secure facilities. But the Trump administration planned its strikes on the Houthis using a group chat—and accidentally included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. theatln.tc/IuULQFiY

Roses are red
Violets are blue

BEHIND-THIS-WEBSITE-NICAR25 Who’s Behind This Website? Priyanjana Bengani Data Reporter Bloomberg Bluesky: @acookiecrumbles.bsky.social Mastodon: @acookiecrumbles@indieweb.social Jon Keegan Tech reporter / Data journalist Sherwo...

Here are the slides for our talk “Who’s Behind This Website?” that @acookiecrumbles.bsky.social and I just gave at #NICAR25.

Slides: bit.ly/nicar25-behi...
Repo with cheatsheet: github.com/jonkeegan/be...

And here’s experimental “NICAR Website Sleuth” GPT that can help you: bit.ly/nicar-sleuth...

Finding needles in haystacks with fuzzy matching (Nicar 2025) FINDING IN HAYSTACKS WITH FUZZY MATCHING NEEDLES @maxharlow.bsky.social

Thanks to all who came to my #nicar25 fuzzy matching session! The slides are here: docs.google.com/presentation...

Was listening to Bloomberg radio earlier.
I didn’t realise “a Liz Truss scenario” was a term about the bond market that Americans used when talking to other Americans for a mostly American audience.
Is this soft power?

Name badge

Great to be in Minneapolis for #nicar25! Looking forward to meeting new people and learning new things

Visualising data with R and GGPlot, Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup This month we'll be learning how to create data visualisations using the R programming language and GGPlot. R is used by teams in many newsrooms, and is known for its data

RSVPs are now open for March! Come along to learn how to visualise data with R and GGPlot 📊 www.meetup.com/journocoders...

A couple of brilliant quotes in the FT Bonus Survey.

Rare metal assets, 4,000 workers, a Canary Wharf HQ… but does this billion-pound firm really exist? A bizarre mining business’s fake audit reveals the potential for fraudsters at Companies House

NEW: This marmalade dropper is worth your time… 🤯

Gofer Mining's accounts looked unremarkable. But an investigation with @danneidle.bsky.social revealed an eccentric director, an invented country - & a very real attempt to seize a Ukrainian gold mine.

Aided by lax Companies House checks.

READ:

DOGE Staffer Resigns Over Racist Posts A staffer for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved by a federal judge on Thursday has links to a deleted social-media account that...

I linked DOGE staffer Marko Elez to a deleted X account that advocated repealing the Civil Rights Act, backed a “eugenic immigration policy,” and wrote, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity."

He just resigned. www.wsj.com/tech/doge-st...

U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts Secret order requires blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world, which if implemented would undermine Apple’s privacy pledge to its users.

Exclusive: Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud.

The OCCRP is much more than just reporters: they make investigative infrastructure to support newsrooms. The true impact of the OCCRP is way larger and grander than the stories that have their name on it.

Practical AI for data journalism with Hugging Face, Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 7:00 PM | Meetup This month we'll be learning how to use artificial intelligence for practical data journalism tasks using Hugging Face. [Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/) is a popula

RSVPs are now open for February! Come along to learn how to use AI for practical data journalism with Hugging Face 🤗 www.meetup.com/journocoders...

London mansion sold for £139mn to mystery buyer The Holme is one of a few private residences located inside​​ Regent’s Park

www.ft.com/content/4e29...

Mega mansion sells for big bucks. But who is the new neighbour?

Draft regulation is set to make it harder for beneficial owners of properties to be shielded behind trust arrangements and bring more transparency into the ownership of property holdings in the UK.