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Why One Upscale Apartment Building Became a Death Trap

Ben Hubbard

@NYTBen

11h

Renaissance Residence in southern Turkey was a towering complex said to be strong enough to withstand powerful earthquakes. But in February, it became a death trap. Our months-long investigation shows what went wrong. With the wizards of

@nytgraphics

nytimes.com

A Times investigation and forensic analysis uncovered how flawed design and minimal oversight proved fatal when a major earthquake struck southern Turkey.

Ollie Ballinger

Peering Beyond the Clouds: A Guide to Bellingcat’s Ship Detection Tool - bellingcat

May 11

As always, massive thank you to

@EoghanMacguire

who basically wrote both articles and

@obtusatum

who made sure the code works!

Just draw a box over an area of interest, and it will show you the dates a ship was present (and even estimate the length). Here's a fun one where you can spot the sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva, which used to be docked in Sevastopol

Here's a guide to using the tool. It can be used to monitor maritime activity in situations where AIS is deliberately turned off.

bellingcat.com

The Ship Detection Tool is a satellite imaging resource that uses Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery to identify ships in port, at anchor or at sea.

Ships are required by law to broadcast their poisition and identity via the Automatic Identification System. In the image above, only four ships had their AIS turned on. To get around this, i built a tool that uses radar satellite imagery to identify ships ollielballinger.users.earthengine.app/view/ship-dete

Had a blast presenting on open source climate data for environmental investigations with

@wammezz

at #ijf2023! You can watch the full workshop here: journalismfestival.com/programme/2023

Bellingcat

@bellingcat

Apr 19

At #ijf23 this week? Don’t miss Friday’s workshop on using open-source data for environment and climate reporting. Hosted by Bellingcat contributors

Using environmental open-source data

and

@wammezz

, they will help unpack tools that quantify and visualise environmental changes.

journalismfestival.com

A hands on session for interested (aspiring) journalists on how to use open-source data on environment and climate reporting. At Bellingcat, we are exploring novel tools and data sets on collecting...

Journalismfund Europe

@journalismfund

Apr 15

👉 Western oil companies are worsening the water crisis in #Iraq: a new investigation by

@alasaleinad

@SaraManisera

& an undisclosed journalist shows how Supported by 🌍Earth Investigations Programme

@ArcadiaFund

The story ⬇️ bit.ly/3KWz41N

Planet

@planet

Apr 8

What's that we hear? A collective sigh of relief (and maybe a sneeze) from all Californians ready for Spring. 🌸 Wildflowers are in full bloom over Carrizo Plain in Southern California following heavy rainfall this past winter. 📸: SkySat • Carrizo Plain, CA • 4/5/23

SkySat • Carrizo Plain, CA • April 5, 2023

read image description

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Logan Williams

@obtusatum

Mar 29

early, original set of Garamond letter punches, 1556

Caitlin Johnstone

@caitoz

Mar 24

Crenshaw: [Chinese citizens] must cooperate with Chinese intelligence whenever they are called upon, and if they are called upon they're bound to secrecy. That would include you. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew: I'm Singaporean.

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Multiple civilian deaths linked to 2016-17 British airstrikes against IS in Mosul

Airwars

@airwars

Mar 21

For more than a year, Airwars and

@guardian

have been combing newly declassified documents to identify unacknowledged civilian harm from UK strikes. By

and

Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds deaths despite claims British weapons did not harm a single non-combatant

iNaturalist observations: "locals" and "tourists"

Where are

observations made by people in their own backyards, and where are observations mostly by visitors? Inspired by

@enf

's Locals and Tourists (2010) and

@ReaderMeter

, I made '"Locals" and "Tourists" on iNaturalist.'

exclav.es

In 2010, cartographer Erica Fischer made some simple and spectacular maps of images added to Flickr. She classified photos as either from “locals” or “tourists”, based on how far their profile...

Data from satellites reveal the vast extent of fighting in Ukraine

BBC London

@BBCLondonNews

Mar 15

Not a single Tube train is running in London at the moment as staff go on strike. 📲 Full story here: bbc.in/3JhdMd9

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thanks to

etc. for their amazing work on this article!

Did some more analysis for

@TheEconomist

, this time doing damage detection across Ukraine on the anniversary of the war. Again, here is an interactive tool allowing users to explore destroyed buildings across the entire country: ollielballinger.users.earthengine.app/view/ukraine-d

economist.com

Scars of the war can be found far beyond the front lines

Antonia Cundy

@antoniacundy

Feb 20

NEW: Over the past two years, almost all academic and arts institutions have cut ties with the Sackler family name, some forced to backpedal on previous refusals to do so. Oxford, meanwhile, has not... 🧵(1/2) enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/cfce415

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Will Turkey’s Erdogan ever pay the price for millions of illegal buildings?

Louise Callaghan

@louiseelisabet

Feb 19

In Antakya last week, we met a group of young lawyers hunting among the ruins for evidence of illegal construction to hold those responsible to account. Here's our piece, and video, in

with

and

As excavators crashed through the rubble, and ambulances wailed past, Eser Duran climbed over the ruins of a home, picked up a piece of broken concrete and stowed it in a blue plastic bag

high res imagery for validation

map.openaerialmap.org

OpenAerialMap Browser

Browse the open collection of aerial imagery.

Methodology paper is currently under blind peer review for a conference but will share ASAP! Also caveats: accuracy will improve as more imagery becomes available; accuracy for areas with less coverage (northern syria) probably lower than e.g. kahramanmaras

I built a tool to conduct damage assessment in Turkey: ollielballinger.users.earthengine.app/view/turkey-ea Worked with an amazing team the Economist to provide analysis for the story below. It uses an algorithm i've been developing to detect persistent changes in Sentinel-1 imagery.

Quote Tweet

The Economist

@TheEconomist

Feb 17

In Kahramanmaras, a Turkish city caught between the two epicentres of the quakes, districts with many tall buildings were particularly vulnerable econ.st/411GHKh

What’s in the laundromat? Mapping and characterising offshore-owned residential property in London...

Rex McKenzie

@Idemamba

Feb 10

We have a new article/publication. I am pretty pleased with it. "What’s in the laundromat?"

journals.sagepub.com

The UK, particularly London, is a global hub for money laundering, a significant portion of which takes place through residential property. However, understandi...

United Nations Geospatial and 6 others

UN Mappers

@UN_Mappers

Feb 8

Calling all mappers! Mapathon to support the Turkish #OpenStreetMap community following the massive #earthquake that hit southern Türkiye and northern Syria. 📅Friday 10 February from 15 to 17 CET. Make a difference, join us !💙 👉tinyurl.com/10TRMap

@gischatbot

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Dr. Ezgi Karasozen

@ezgikarasozen

Feb 7

We know the earthquake-prone regions in Turkey, and we have the proper building codes. The issue is execution. Here's an example of that. This apartment (flat) posting is recent, from a couple of days ago. 1/3

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geographile

@geographile

Feb 1

a human head with the Mercator projection

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Twitter Dev

@TwitterDev

Feb 2

Starting February 9, we will no longer support free access to the Twitter API, both v2 and v1.1. A paid basic tier will be available instead 🧵

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Saul Staniforth

@SaulStaniforth

Jan 18

Huw Merriman, the Tory rail minister, admitted today that the govt has spent more money fighting railway workers than it would have cost to settle the dispute.

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near

@nearcyan

Jan 17

Accurate Pose Estimation Via WiFi Signals "our model can estimate the dense pose of multiple subjects, with comparable performance to image-based approaches, by utilizing WiFi signals as the only input" arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2301.00250

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Basingstoke Labour Party and Basingstoke Young Labour

David Lawrence

@dc_lawrence

Dec 23, 2022

These four graphs from the FT tell you everything you need to know about the difference a Labour government makes, and how much our country has suffered from 12 years of Tory neglect. Want change? Vote Labour. on.ft.com/3hOOUje

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The CWU

@CWUnews

Dec 9, 2022

The London rally will live long in the memories of everyone who was there. The sight of our Muslim members organising a prayer together was so powerful. This is what the working class is. Jummah Mubarak #StandByYourPost

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USSbriefs might be MAB-ing

@USSbriefs

Dec 5, 2022

‘Her own pay, £459,000 a year, has been criticised. Is it sustainable for administrators’ pay to increase, while lecturers are striking over pensions? “I would really love to avoid talking about that,” she sighs’ #ucuRISING

ft.com

Louise Richardson: ‘I do wish our students were more resilient about nasty remarks’

Before she steps down this month, the vice-chancellor of Oxford university talks about cancel culture, state schools and why universities should not be businesses

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Ollie Ballinger

Dec 1, 2022

Took a panorama of the March yesterday.

@UCU

as far as the eye can see ❤️#UCUrising

Alison Killing

@alisonkilling

Nov 29, 2022

NEW: On June 24th at least 23 people died trying to cross from Morocco into the Spanish outpost Melilla. Spain has denied responsibility, but the video evidence shows pushbacks from Spain to Morocco and unconscious bodies on the Spanish side. A

@LHReports

investigation. Thread

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push the needle

@pushtheneedle

Nov 26, 2022

here is London’s tube map overlaid on Seattle (left) and Seattle’s light rail network overlaid on London (right)

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Jon Reades @jreades@mapstodon.space

@jreades

Nov 16, 2022

Owing to illness, this week's

@CASAUCL

seminar will now be given by our own

CASA Seminar Series: Ollie Ballinger, CASA

on the very topical "Open-Source Damage Detection in Ukraine" using Sentinel-1 satellite imagery and social media! Sign up to hear Ollie speak here:

eventbrite.com

Open-Source Damage Detection in Ukraine