#1: Elections, pumpkins, and design
note: I don’t really have an idea of what I’m going to write about. My plan is to just write about things until common themes and points of discussion arise. The brand shall create itself. Ha ha. Sounds like laziness, I know. Sorry. Just read on.
Work
(this is the part where I discuss work and things I learned)
Tuesday, Nov. 5th was an election day. WaPo’s news/election engineering team published pages for Kentucky’s governor race, Mississippi’s governor race, and Virginia’s State Senate and House of Delegates races. In summer, my internship was focused on building these pages. Now that I’m in the lab, I’m a bit detached, but I contributed some code to the dynamic headlines you’ll see on the governor race pages:
I also wrote some of the code behind these tables, and wrote a script to generate little maps in the top right corner that show you where each district is:
When Jason B. and I were designing the table together, I made a ‘look book’ of tables from other news outlets, i.e. I screenshotted a bunch of tables and analyzed why some seem better than others, along with writing recommendations for ourselves.
Something Jason has taught me is that designers ensure nothing is superfluous. That’s why, for example, the rightmost column of our table only has a percent symbol on the first row. It’s already implied for the others. (Side note, Jason is a very knowledgeable and fun mentor.)
Most notably, these pages were two very intense, very sleep-deprived weeks in the (digital) flesh. We debuted a new voter turnout prediction model, which you can read about here if you’re interested in the math. There’s a byline at the bottom to credit the whole team, and although it’s in small gray text, it brings a sweet feeling to have our names stamped on it. Those pages got 1.1 million visits! 💪
Being on a time crunch lately has made me reflect on what I’ve learned in the last 4 months. I’m not exactly an expert programmer, but many small tasks are easier, which, all in all, makes me faster. I can almost physically feel that change in my brain. Pow pow. It’s less cluttered with walking and more concerned with where I’m going. On top of that, learning more about web tech has made me browse the internet differently—when I see something cool, I immediately wonder how it was made, and sometimes, I even wager a good guess.
Life
(this is the part where I tell a story)
Do not carve pumpkins unless you’re saving mice a few weeks later
As you may have already known or guessed, I’m currently based in DC. Most of my friends are in Illinois or sprinkled throughout the country, so my social life so far has been from scratch. Sometimes I hang out with my family friend, Adam, who recently started a full-time job in Virginia. Usually, we just eat ramen and banter about anime and League of Legends, but a few weeks ago, in October, I resolved to celebrate autumn by carving pumpkins. I invited him to do this with me, and he accepted.
Neither of us had carved pumpkins in over 8 years, but after a brief bus ride, we found ourselves in possession of two pumpkins and a carving set. Excellent. After a couple hours, I proudly placed our two gourd masterpieces outside my front door. The next day, I came home to find that squirrels had eaten a bunch of the pumpkin flesh, ruining our carvings. This was kind of amusing, so I just left them out like that for a couple weeks.
BAD MOVE. Do NOT leave your pumpkins out to rot and soak in rainstorms! I noticed them getting gross and black but continued to test the pumpkins’ resolve. One Sunday night, I came home and decided enough was enough. I got a couple garbage bags and attempted to scoop the squishy, rotten pumpkins inside.
Pumpkin juice squirted everywhere. Bugs, kicked out of their pumpkin carcass home, swarmed me.
I live in the upper/raised unit of a house, atop a set of stairs, so juice dripped below in front of the basement unit door.
After tossing the pumpkins in the trash bin, I unraveled a hose and washed all the juice from the upper level, but I felt bad about getting juice in front of the basement door, so I went to hose that place down too. But it was dark, so my juice-soaked fingers fumbled with my phone to activate the flashlight and find my way there. I stumbled below the stairs with my hose, squinting in the harsh light of a phone flash, forgetting that hose water with hints of pumpkin juice was dripping from above until I felt it, cold on my scalp, and basically after that I took a long shower and called it a day.
I’ve been walking through DC seeing rotten, carved pumpkins on porches and I smell it all over again.
Anyway, on Friday, I finally caught the mouse I’ve been seeing around for a month, but my Airbnb host told me to wait until he gets back (this coming Tuesday) so that he can release it himself in a faraway part of the city. How am I supposed to keep this mouse (which I have named Francis) alive in an 8-inch box for 4 days?
Francis has food in the trap, so this is a matter of hydration. Except I can’t just pour water through the trap’s holes because then it would mix with his poop and make him sick. I searched all over the kitchen to find some sort of tool to fix this. In the silverware drawer, something caught my eye. Ah yes.
The pumpkin carver. A tiny, feeble, child-proof knife with a bright orange handle. It’s the only thing narrow enough to fit in the trap’s holes yet long enough to carry water droplets.
So basically, for the last 2 days, I’ve been dipping this dull blade into water and sticking it inside the trap so that he can lick it off and stay alive until I release him back into the wild (the city). So far, I think it’s working.
Pumpkins are stupid, carving pumpkins is stupid, but you know, if I hadn’t carved pumpkins, Francis would have died.
Just kidding, he might still die. He’s not looking so hot. I’ll let you know next week if he survived.
Play
(this is the part where I throw you some links or blab about media I read this week)
Tony Wolf’s delightfully earnest NYT comic about the McRib
Jenny Zhang’s Eater piece on boba and its complicated relationship to Asia America
The Pudding’s new interactive on how people laugh online
Finally, Rosa Lyster’s NYT Sunday magazine essay about internet radio, from which I will quote:
“Even if I spent every day of the rest of my life visiting everywhere I’d ever felt curious about, and spent all my time staring at people and asking them about what kind of breakfast they like to eat, what made them choose those kinds of jeans, what made them feel bored, what made them laugh and did they agree that picnics are hugely overrated, I’d never be able to learn anything more than a fraction of what I’d like to about how people in other places live. There were too many different places, too many different people and too many different kinds of jeans.”
And a few calming songs for ya week.
thanks for reading!
Madison