is everything still the worst

The cost of shelter

Nov. 8, 2021

Let's talk about how much money it takes in Philadelphia to keep a roof over your head. This isn't about home owners, though it easily could be; we're just looking at renters and how much or little it costs to live here. Philly is often written about as an affordable place to live. I moved here largely for that reason about (actually, almost to the day) ten years ago. Headlines still proclaim,

The Cost of Living in Philadelphia: More Affordable Than Most Big Cities. As the cost of living continues to increase in NYC, Philly becomes an attractive …

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Judicial Retention - Numbers & Sentencing

Oct. 27, 2021

I wanted to look at the judges that we have up for retention this year and how they compare against other judges in the CCP. I was graciously provided with this data from Eamon Caddigan who took part in a datathon hosted by the kind (and extremely cool and smart) folks at R-Ladies Philadelphia. Anyway, let's dive in and see how these judges sentence folks in Philadelphia relative to their peers (we'll get to the there shouldn't be jails part later). The data I'm looking at is only for terms of confinement, not probation and parole. I've given the …

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Judicial Retention - Intro

Oct. 20, 2021

This guide is for leftists, so if that doesn't define your political ideology, then you probably won't get a whole lot out of this. As they say in the mileage business, yours may vary.

If judicial races in Philly get almost no coverage, there's absolutely nothing to go on for retention (unless a judge really pisses off the FOP or something). Often, when judges come up for retention, they just assume that they'll win and don't even make a case for themselves remaining in power. (This is a good strategy! No one ever loses!) But each judge that "wins" retention …

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yes

Oct. 19, 2021

it is.

Himawari 8 Bot

April 22, 2016

Another Twitter bot; this one creates GIFs from satellite data from the Japanese Meterological Agency’s Himawari 8 weather satellite. You can find technical information on the satellite at the JMA’s website.

The satellite was launched late-2014, sending back its first image of the full disk of the Earth on December 18, 2014. It remains in geosynchronous orbit over the equator, 35,786km away, right about at 140.7°E. The satellite sends back data every 10 minutes. The videos on this site are from eary runs of the bot and constructed from crops of the full disk images.

The close-crop …

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