Shradha Dinesh

Latest from Killer Train:
FECR is suing Brightline for “clandestinely” negotiating with county governments to add more trains to its rails in violation of a contract agreement between the two companies.

Story by @joshceb.bsky.social + @aaronleibowitz.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/miam...

FEC Railway sues Brightline over commuter rail expansion plan The move could derail a long-awaited commuter train service in South Florida.

The move could derail a long-awaited commuter train service in South Florida.

Killer Train: U.S. transportation chief commits to reducing Brightline deaths After an investigation by the Miami Herald and WLRN, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he would work “to drive down the number of deaths.”

After an investigation by the Miami Herald and WLRN, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he would work “to drive down the number of deaths.”

... and we have a podcast!
bsky.app/profile/dani...

Killer Train Brightline is the deadliest passenger railroad in the United States. An investigation by the Miami Herald and WLRN reveals the shocking toll and the failures that led to it.

For more in our series: www.miamiherald.com/news/local/a...

How the Miami Herald and WLRN found Brightline’s death toll Tallying the death toll for Florida’s Brightline train took a team of reporters a year of diving into autopsy reports and other records.

Our reporting team includes @brittanywallman.bsky.social, @aaronleibowitz.bsky.social, @semerriam.bsky.social, @danielrivero.bsky.social and @joshceb.bsky.social, with contributions to graphics and photography from many more.

Here's how we did it:
www.miamiherald.com/news/local/a...

The reporting team found that Brightline has failed to urgently address the train’s dangers; blamed victims for the high death rate; and turned to the public to pay for safety upgrades as fatalities climbed.

Critical safety measures have been delayed.

New Miami Herald/WLRN investigation:

Brightline trains kill someone every 13 days of service, on average. 182 people have died, and 99 people have been injured. In at least 101 cases, the train crashed into vehicles, but no one was hurt.

Trump Cuts Are Killing a Tiny Office That Keeps Measurements of the World Accurate A tiny but crucial agency that maintains physical coordinates like latitude and longitude in the US is struggling as the Trump administration forces out federal employees.

SCOOP from me: the mass exodus of employees from NOAA is decimating a tiny office that literally keeps our measurements of latitude and longitude accurate — and, former employees tell me, endangers the science of how the US understands global measurements:

so excited to be in snowy minneapolis for #NICAR25! say hi if you’re around, i’d love to connect

Two years after derailment, toxic chemicals still roll through East Palestine Two years after derailment, toxic chemicals still roll through East Palestine.

"Short of sitting by the tracks and scrutinizing hazardous material placards, they have no way of knowing what's on every railcar passing through."

NEW data story w/ the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at UMD: www.npr.org/2025/02/03/g...

regretting all decisions that led me to understand every single word of this piece

except for the very high stat on (news) podcast consumption…that one is all on me

it’s wild that just a couple weeks worth of abysmal music habits/taste during college finals took over all other data for the year on my spotify wrapped

who is going to write the explainer on how the tiktok fyp has been taken over by livestreams peddling QVC channel-esque teleshopping slop content!! who is watching this stuff?

(I personally see more of this now than any other labeled advertising! and the app has felt unusable for weeks now)

To all a happy 🎇🎇🎇 International Shapefile Day 🎇🎇🎇🎇

May your colleagues never send you just the .shp when you ask for their data.

(thanks to Gabriel Zanlorenssi for reminding me)

fingers crossed that my computer won't be able to sense my fear

in anticipation of my new computer arriving, I've endured almost nightly dreams where I'm stuck in a groundhog day-type eternity debugging a flood of nonsensical python environment errors

finally my favorite time of the year — got offline and accomplished some of my own recipe testing this week

need to add some cookie week recipes to the rotation asap!

my password manager, of all things (!!!), got bought out a few years ago and this perfectly sums up my feelings about finding another (still haven’t)

(and more broadly how the constant need to replace tech with other ~better~ tech feels like such a waste of time & energy)

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Image: A bedroom at night, a face is lit up by the glow of a phone screen displaying cat memes. On the book-cluttered bedside table, three books look on angrily. The lead book waves a large knife and says: "Nobody needs to get hurt... Let's just put the phone down, nice and slowly..." Caption: Bedside reading pile turns nasty

My cartoon for this week’s Guardian books…

Monochromatic blue map showing the bathymetry of Lake Superior in meters created in March 2022. Title is Lake Superior Bathymetry and the continuous scale is a dark to light color ramp from -405.1 meters to 376.81 meters.

hello! here’s a random map i made a long time ago 📊

trying to find other folks working on interesting *data science-y* /computational social sci projects and writers on internet culture and tech/AI & society beats

say hi if that sounds like you :)

microdosing this app until it stops feeling like every post in my feed was written in 2012 internet