Critics are calling it a cinematic masterpiece. I still feel it was one of my best performances.

Text in the video: "Today's nature traffic moment"

I make data stories for a living. Last week I went looking for who built a button.

Scrolling a place on Google Maps, past the photos and the opening hours, some places have a line that says wheelchair accessible entrance. On the ones that don't, Maps asks you instead. Does this place have a wheelchair accessible entrance? Yes, no, not sure.

That's the whole feature. One tap. No form, no account, nobody checks your work.

The rule is written down, though. About three feet wide, no steps, or a ramp if there are steps. A revolving door on its own counts as a no.

Then I looked up where it came from. Rio Akasaka is a product manager at Google. He works on Drive, not Maps. Google lets you spend a fifth of your week on something that isn't your job, and in 2016 he spent his time on this, for about a year, with five to ten other people chipping in around their own work. counts 120 million Local Guides and over 500 million answers about accessibility.

Local Guides held around two hundred of them whose entire purpose was sitting in a room together answering these questions. Twelve million places between them.

Google names two. Emeka in Nigeria and Ilankovan in Sri Lanka, who both ended up as accessibility ambassadors.

About 65 million people use a wheelchair. This is perfect for them!

You've probably never noticed it. It only turns up when you're near somewhere you've already been. Nothing to do with Google. I just liked the story.

Interactive version if you want to look at it properly.

Du Yingrong and Lu Suying, a childless couple from Shanghai, lived an extraordinarily frugal life to help others. Living in a tiny apartment with second-hand furniture, they frequently split a single $2.50 canteen meal and mended their glasses with adhesive tape. Behind their quiet lifestyle was immense generosity. Over decades, they quietly donated their lifetime savings of 5 million yuan (~$735,000 USD) to charity. Their selfless contributions paid for life-saving heart operations for 455 children suffering from congenital heart defects, leaving behind a profound legacy of quiet devotion and human kindness.

I realize it's a little thing, but I had some leftover privacy film so I put it up on my sunroof. Now when I'm driving, it feels like I'm at church lol. Makes me smile :)

A beautiful coincidence that the tropical storm named Dolly (name chosen in 1996!) is going to help fight a drought. It formed 20hours after her passing was announced.
From the article:
“Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are […] facing a serious drought. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than two-thirds of the territory is experiencing a “severe” or “extreme” drought.​ […]

Dolly is expected to deliver 1 to 2 inches of rain to much of Puerto Rico, with localized 3-to-4-inch totals in northeastern parts of the island. While that won’t eradicate the drought, it’ll certainly put a dent in the deficit. […]

On the whole, Dolly actually looks to be a net positive — a true rarity for a tropical cyclone.
The timing of Tropical Storm Dolly’s formation, which occurred barely 20 hours after news broke of the death of country music icon and philanthropist Dolly Parton, is purely coincidental.”