Make it make sense

San Francisco, CA
Joined September 2017
Notebooks now come with a default @duckdb.org database so you can immediately start querying your file attachments or load something with read_csv.
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(Oops, you can tell I copy-pasted this from Bluesky. —Ed.)
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From @recifs: “Prediction markets didn’t see the far right’s Oct. 25 defeats coming.” observablehq.com/@fil/polyma…
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What do you learn from coding an explanation by hand vs. with Claude? Ricky Reusser has done a lot both ways; on the latest episode of our podcast, we compare one of each. Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=7epnD2Ed… Subscribe: observablehq.com/podcast
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1. Toiletpaperfullerenes and Charmin Nanotubes (2020) observablehq.com/@rreusser/t… 2. Geodesics in Kerr Spacetime (2026) rreusser.github.io/notebooks… (self-hosted using Notebook Kit!)
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Recent improvements: automatic thumbnails for 2.0 notebooks; add collections and edit their metadata (but not yet their contents); speed up navigating your workspace; see recent comments across all your notebooks in one place. observablehq.com/@observable…
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You can now follow users to see their latest notebooks in the “Following” feed on your homepage. You’ll also get an email when they publish something. And we’ve consolidated the personal and community navigation so you see everything on that left sidebar. observablehq.com/@observable…
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We previously introduced following in January 2023 and removed it the following January. We had our reasons, but broadly it was a mistake and we regret it. Fortunately, we still have the follow graph! So, if you’ve been around, your old follows are intact.
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One thing we’re not planning to port from the old site is the Notion-style “add cell menu”. When introduced in 2022, the extra clicks caused friction and frustration, but many came to depend on it for enumerating possibilities. Today, with AI, it’s hard to justify such a list.
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Original announcement xitter.cf/observablehq/status/15… Example of past frustration github.com/observablehq/feed… and new relief talk.observablehq.com/t/some…
📣 New @observablehq product update 📊 Create faster with the Add Cell Menu With Add Cell Menu just click ➕ or type ⌘cmd↩︎return to get started & you now have dozens of building blocks at your fingertips! See how it works below. Learn more here ➡️ observablehq.com/@observable…
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But we appreciate the discussion, and it remains interesting to consider the ways in which AI *doesn’t* satisfy the same needs. It’s far more expensive; it provides little taxonomy; and you don’t get finite iconographic representations of directions you could take.
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Nice data sonification, made in Observable. See also: - DOM mutation observablehq.com/@mbostock/a… - Simple chart observablehq.com/@maxblee/au… - There’s a wild two-series sonification if you scroll to the bottom of this one observablehq.com/@datavizstu… - The g.o.a.t. archive.nytimes.com/www.nyti…
What does the rise of $1B deposits on Aave V4 sound like? Listen to this chart 🔊 @aave
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The agent can now read other notebooks, both public ones and your private ones. You can just paste a link, or create a collection called “Skills”; notebooks in a “Skills” collection get highlighted in the attachments menu. Here we demonstrate a very strict style guide.
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After notebooks 1.0 (2018–), we got inspired by @kepano’s 2023 stephango.com/file-over-app, leading to Framework (2023) and then Notebook Kit (2025), upon which we rewrote the site. Still stitching it together: you can now download your notebooks and open them in the desktop app.
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If you “Export JavaScript”, you can e.g. publish that module to npm and import it back to a notebook: import {hello} from "npm:example-observable-module" with {type: "observable"}; See observablehq.com/@observable…
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We think web & desktop each have strengths & make different workflows ergonomic, so we’re not planning to try to sync notebooks back & forth. The web allows one-click publishing; desktop allows running Python against large or sensitive local files. Render unto Caesar…
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Julio has a charming Zoom background full of books. In today’s podcast we test at random whether he’s read them. YouTube: youtu.be/87iO4jUBa6M Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5Ij… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… RSS: feeds.transistor.fm/observab…
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Julio cannot recommend “Strange Pilgrims” by Gabriel García Márquez, a 1992 collection of short stories (written decades earlier).
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People love bookshelves
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Chech out the Pallweber Jumping Minute Mechanism in my newly published @observablehq notebook: 🔗 observablehq.com/@christophe… #Horology #Watchmaking
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